





CopyrightN?_ 


COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. 



































































The Trend of the Centuries 


BT THE SAME AUTHOR 


The Bible Verified 

i6mo. Price, cents. 

A BOOK FOR LAYMEN AS WELL AS CLERGYMEN 

Three Editions, and Translations into Spanish and Japanese 

CONTENTS 

I. What Constitutes the Bible. II. The Bible in Manuscript. III. 
The Bible in English. IV. The Inspiration of the Bible. V. The Bible 
and the Miraculous. VI. Formidable Objections to the Bible. VII. In¬ 
cidental Confirmations of the Bible. VIII. The Bible and Science. IX. 
The Bible and the Mummies of the Pharaohs. X. Elevating Influence 
of the Bible. XL The Bible and the Golden City of Babylon. XII. 
The Bible and the Commercial City of Tyre. XIII. Biblical Signs Pre¬ 
ceding the Destruction of Jerusalem. XIV. The Bible and the Destruc¬ 
tion of Jerusalem. XV. The Bible and the Peculiar Jews. XVI. The 
Bible and the Monuments—Egypt and Assyria. XVII. The Bible and 
the Monuments—Babylonia and Palestine. 

SAMPLE OPINIONS 

President J. G. K. McClure, D. D., of Lake Forest University: “I 
have never found a book so suitable for size and contents to place in the 
hands of the ordinary inquirer who desires to know the preeminent 
value of the Bible in the literatures of the world as THE BIBLE 
VERIFIED.” 

Bishop J. P. Newman, D.D., LL.D.: “It is a timely book. The com¬ 
mon people will read it gladly. Scholars will find mental recreation 
therein. . . . Would that some wealthy saint would put THE 

BIBLE VERIFIED in the hand of every minister and Sunday-school 
superintendent in the land.” 

Prof. A. H. Sayce, D.D., LL.D., of Oxford University: “It is written 
at once interestingly and forcibly. ... I see that you have con¬ 
sulted the latest and best authorities.” 


THE BIBLE VERIFIED has been used to a consider¬ 
able extent in advanced classes of Sunday-schools, in nor¬ 
mal work, and in young people’s clubs. THE TREND 
OF THE CENTURIES might be similarly utilized in a 
scheme of Christian evidences as showing that God is not 
only in the Word but also in the world. 





The 


Trend of the Centuries 


The Historical Unfolding 
of the Divine Purpose 


BY THE 

Rev. ANDREW W. ARCHIBALD, d.d. 

Author of “ The Bible Verified ” 


“ Not in vain the distance beacons. Forward, forward let us range ; 

Let the great world spin forever down the ringing grooves of change.” 

“Yet I doubt not through the ages one increasing purpose runs, 

And the thoughts of men are widened with the process of the suns.” 

—Tennyson. 


’> 3 > > > 3 I >), )) > 3 3 j 3 ; 

3 >35 > >355’ 3 > 3 ’ > > 

3 3 3 3 3 3 > 3 3 3 3 3 3 >3 33' 33 

3 933 3 3>3 , , 33 3 33 3 

3 33333 3333 333,3, 333 3 


BOSTON 

TOe pilgrim press 


CHICAGO 


THE LIBRARY OF 
CONGRESS, 

Two Cowes Received 

APR. 26 1901 

Copyright entry 

'ryic^A 

CLASS XXc. N»- 
COPY B. 


Copyright, 1901, 

By A. W. Archibald 



r* 

d 

H 

<\J 

ITit Commemoration 

OF THE 

FIFTIETH MARRIAGE ANNIVERSARY 
SEPTEMBER NINTH, NINETEEN HUNDRED 

OF 

CHARLES AUSTIN WARREN 

AND 

EMELINE CURTIS 

THIS VOLUME IS DEDICATED 
BY THEIR SON-IN-LAW 

THE AUTHOR 






PREFACE 


This volume, like The Bible Verified, 
from the same pen, has been an unconscious 
growth, rather than a predetermined product 
laboriously wrought out from beginning to 
end. In the midst of a busy pastorate, dis¬ 
courses were given time and again on strik¬ 
ing events and epochs and personages. A 
selected number of these was found to consti¬ 
tute a consecutive line of thought, the chapters 
after the first (which is general and introduc¬ 
tory) following one another in the order of 
logical and also of historical sequence, except 
that the consideration of the Keformation 
once entered upon is finished before attention 
is turned to Columbus, who ushers in the mod¬ 
ern period. 

After the chapter giving what is to be the 
ruling idea of the book, four chapters set forth 
the preparation for Christianity under the 
old dispensation, the divine purpose though 
suffering apparent defeat yet moving straight 
on. There come next three chapters on the 
actual inauguration and the triumphant estab¬ 
lishment of the heavenly kingdom ; after that 
7 


8 


Preface 


three more on its threatened overthrow from 
without through Islamism, and then five on 
the danger of defeat from within through the 
corruption of the Church, this peril being 
averted by the Protestant movement, while 
four chapters treat of the new era that 
dawned with the discovery of another conti¬ 
nent, each illustrating the truth that “ life 
shall on and upward go.” Of course, a vast 
library would be needed to cover in detail the 
ground that is traversed, but for popular use 
this single volume perhaps will sufficiently in¬ 
dicate in broad outline the sweep of God’s 
steadily maturing plan through the centuries. 

The purpose of the work is to set forth 
Bunsen’s great idea of “ God in history.” 
This is not exclusively a clergyman’s concep¬ 
tion, but it is likewise that of representative 
historians. Bancroft, for instance, in the in¬ 
troduction to his History of the United 
States, could say that his object was, “ as the 
fortunes of a nation are not under the control 
of a blind destiny, to follow the steps by which 
a favoring Providence, calling our institutions 
into being, has conducted the country to its 
present happiness and glory.” In his chapter 
on the Pilgrims he similarly recognizes the 
divine in this way : “ The mysterious influence 
of that Power which enchains the destinies of 


Preface 


9 


states, overruling the decisions of sovereigns 
and the forethought of statesmen, often de¬ 
duces the greatest events from the least com¬ 
manding causes.” If the author has not failed 
of his aim, it is thus from the attitude of the 
broad generalization of the historian even, 
rather than from the moralizing or specially 
theological standpoint, that this work has 
been produced, with its emphasis upon the 
agency of “ the power that makes for right¬ 
eousness ” in the unfolding of the years. 

When it came to selecting a title that would 
comprehend all that has been written, there 
came to mind what Themistocles once said to 
Xerxes, “ that a man’s discourse was like to a 
rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and 
patterns of which can only be shown by 
spreading and extending it out; when it is 
contracted and folded up, they are obscure 
and lost.” With a desire that such may be 
the happy effect of this opening up of the 
past, of the disclosure in the following pages 
of God’s great and unique plan with its ex¬ 
quisite designs, and with confidence that in¬ 
spiration for the twentieth century will be 
caught, when the trend of the centuries that 
precede is clearly discerned, when through all 
the previous ages a mastering, controlling Will, 
both beneficent and righteous, is recognized, 


10 


Preface 


this volume is herewith entitled, “ The Trend 
of the Centuries: or The Historical Unfolding 
of the Divine Purpose.” 

The writer’s course of thought will not 
have been followed in vain, if the reader, at 
its close, is ready to say with Browning: 

“ God’s in his heaven, 

All’s right with the world.” 

This volume will have accomplished its object 
if doubt is removed and if faith in an over¬ 
ruling Providence is strengthened, till there is 
Tennyson’s recognition of 

“One far-off divine event, 

To which the whole creation moves.” 


Andrew W. Archibald. 

Porter Congregational Church, 

Brockton, Mass. December , 1900. 


Under other captions, the second and last chapters of this 
book have largely appeared in The Bibliotheca Sacra of Ober- 
lin and The Treasury of New York, and are here repro¬ 
duced with their permission. 


CONTENTS 


CHAP. PAGE 

I. The Whirling Wheels of Divine Prov¬ 

idence . ... 13 

II. The Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 35 

III. The Heroic Jeremiah and the Down¬ 

fall of Judah.55 

IV. The Unrecognized Girding of Cyrus 

the Great and the Return From 

the Captivity.81 

V. World Empires.103 

VI. The Fulness of Time.119 

VII. A Skeptical Age. ... 139 

VIII. The Appeal Unto Caesar : Christianity 

Victorious. . 163 

IX. The Crescent and the Cross.185 

X. The Crusaders.205 

XI. The Young Crusaders.225 

XII. John Wycliffe the Morning Star of 

the Reformation.247 

XIII. The Reformation.267 

XIV. Martin Luther the Reformer .... 283 

XV. The Spanish Armada : Security Against 

Hostile Fleets .303 

XVI. The Edict of Nantes : The Struggle 

for Freedom of Worship.319 

XVII. Christopher Columbus the Discoverer 

of America.337 

XVIII. The Pilgrims : The Coming of the May¬ 
flower .359 

XIX. John Wesley the Founder of Methodism 377 
XX. The Triumphant Nineteenth Century . 401 
11 
















THE WHIRLING WHEELS OF DIVINE 
PROVIDENCE 


‘ ‘ As for the wheels, they were called in my hearing, the 
whirling wheels.”— Ezekiel 10 : 13. 


I 


THE WHIRLING WHEELS OF DIVINE 
PROVIDENCE 

The whirling wheels of Ezekiel have gen¬ 
erally been regarded as emblematic of the 
circling events of providence. This anciently 
was not an uncommon thought. The Koman 
philosopher, Seneca, makes reference to “ the 
wheel of fortune.” Sophocles, the Greek poet, 
speaks of 

“ Whirling upon the gods’ swift wheel around,” 

to indicate the vicissitudes of life. “ The 
Egyptian wheels,” says Plutarch, in his life of 
Numa, “signify to us the instability of human 
fortune, and that, in whatever way God 
changes and turns our lot and condition, we 
should rest contented, and accept it as right 
and fitting.”* We are to consider the whirling 
wheels of divine providence. 

First, we will notice their majestic and re¬ 
sistless sweep. “Their rings,” we are in¬ 
formed, “were high and dreadful.” Their 
vast circumference swept the whole range of 
created things. They were also, it is said, of 
l 5 


i6 The Trend of the Centuries 


“the color of beryl.” They rolled by with 
the splendor of a flashing gem. How sublime 
and beautiful the working of God is! Take 
the natural world, and the same law governs 
the rolling spheres and the whirling dust. 
Atom and star acknowledge the same subtle 
forces of attraction and repulsion. The rim 
of the wheel compasses the farthest globe and 
the nearest molecule. Gravitation is universal. 
The wheels of God’s providential government 
in this respect are indeed “ high and dreadful.” 
Were he to withhold his care for a moment, 
the orderly cosmos would break up into the 
original chaos. 

And what beauty as well as grandeur in the 
revolutions of the wheels ! We think of the 
“color of beryl,” as we recall that scene of 
the succession of the seasons, so charmingly 
painted in Thomson’s immortal poem, but we 
do not recognize God as we should, and as he 
did, in the “ rolling year ” : 

“ Man marks not Thee, marks not the mighty hand, 

That, ever busy, wheels the silent spheres.” 

Hot only in nature, but in history, high and 
dreadful are the wheels of God’s on-moving 
chariot. We are amazed at the way the car 
of religious progress has rolled on, with na¬ 
tions powerless to resist its onward course. It 


Wheels of Divine Providence 17 

has been a triumphal car all down the ages, 
and in its track the mightiest monarchies and 
dynasties have been as “the small dust.” 

Note some of the facts. The chosen people 
were a little band of slaves in ancient Egypt, 
but they gained, under God, their freedom. 
They spent seventy years of captivity in the 
Babylonian empire, but a faithful remnant re¬ 
turned and rebuilt Jerusalem. The Jews were 
destroyed as a nation, when the armies of 
Titus left not one stone upon another of the 
holy city, but, phoenix-like, out of the ashes 
of the disastrous conflagration sprang Chris¬ 
tianity. 

Then the gospel encountered pagan em¬ 
perors of great power, who opposed it to the 
death, but it steadily made its way on, till it 
sat on the throne of the Caesars in the conver¬ 
sion of Constantine. It was threatened with 
extinction by the hordes of barbarians that 
poured down from the north, causing the de¬ 
cline and fall of the great Roman empire, but 
not of the kingdom of the truth, which swept 
on to greater triumphs in the conversion of 
the very savages by whom it was assaulted, 
and it gave us our present European States 
with their Christian civilization. How ma¬ 
jestically the cause has rolled on through the 
centuries ! The whirling wheels make one rim 


18 The Trend of the Centuries 


of light brilliant as beryl, when looked at in the 
immensity of their sweep through millenniums 
and over widely-separated countries. No other 
movement in history has advanced with such 
sublimity and beauty. It has turned tempo¬ 
rary defeat into ultimate victory, and the 
strongest kingdoms of earth, the mightiest 
forces of evil, have been unable to arrest the 
forward march of the Conqueror riding as on 
resplendent chariot down the track of time. 
The sweep of the wheels has been grand and 
resistless. 

Within the circuit of the divine purpose, 
too, comes every individual. Little circum¬ 
stances and events time and again in one’s 
personal experience may seem to be without 
design, and yet they are not. That insect, 
which by its perseverance in accomplishing 
a difficult task is said to have carried en¬ 
couragement to the fainting heart of Bruce in 
his lonely dungeon, that insignificant spider, 
in swinging to a place and finally fastening its 
silken thread there, was a link in the chain of 
providence, by which God secured the liberties 
of Scotland. A change in many a one’s course 
of life may grow out of some equally unim¬ 
portant incident, may be traced to the casual 
remark of a friend or even stranger. 

We have all read how Borne was once 


Wheels of Divine Providence 19 

saved by the cackling of geese. The Gauls, it 
will be recalled, in the dead of night began 
the precipitous ascent of the Capitoline Hill, 
hoping thus to capture the eternal city. 
“ Neither man nor dog perceived their com¬ 
ing,” says the ancient historian Plutarch, who 
continues, “ but there were sacred geese kept 
near the temple of Juno, which at other times 
were plentifully fed, but now, by reason that 
corn and other provisions were grown scarce 
for all, were but in a poor condition. The 
creature is by nature of quick sense, and ap¬ 
prehensive of the least noise, so that these, be¬ 
ing moreover watchful through hunger, and 
restless, immediately discovered the coming of 
the Gauls, and, running up and down with 
their noise and cackling, they raised the whole 
camp.” Home was thus warned and saved. 
Little circumstances determine destinies. The 
crowing of a cock brought Peter to repentance. 
A forgotten strain of music, heard once more 
after the lapse of years, may awaken memories 
which revolutionize character. There is no 
more solemn truth in Scripture than that enun¬ 
ciated by James in his epistle, “ Behold, the 
ships also, though they are so great, and are 
driven by rough winds, are yet turned about 
by a very small rudder.” 

It often does not take much to give an 


20 The Trend of the Centuries 


entirely new direction to one’s life. Andrew 
D. White, in a certain number of The Forum , 
in relating how he was educated, tells how 
what seemed an accidental remark affected 
his whole subsequent career. He had gradu¬ 
ated at Yale, and had studied abroad several 
years. “ In 1856,” he says, “ I returned, and 
met my class, assembled to take their masters’ 
degrees in course at Yale. Then came the 
turning-point in my whole education. I had 
been for some time uneasy, because the way 
did not seem clear before me; but at this Yale 
commencement in 1856, while lounging with 
my classmates in the college yard, I heard 
some one say that President Way land of 
Brown University was speaking in the Alumni 
Hall. Going to the door, I looked within, 
and saw upon the platform an old man, heavy- 
browed, with spectacles resting upon the top 
of his head. Just at that moment he said, very 
impressively, that in his opinion the best field 
of work for graduates was in the West. . . . 
I had never seen him before; I never saw him 
afterward. His speech lasted perhaps ten 
minutes; but it settled a great question for 
me. I went home, wrote to sundry friends 
that I was a candidate for the professorship of 
history in any Western college where there 
was a chance to get at students.” As a con- 


Wheels of Divine Providence 21 

sequence, there opened up to him the desired 
position in the University of Michigan, and 
thus he entered upon his distinguished educa¬ 
tional career, becoming later President of 
Cornell, and then foreign ambassador and 
trusted diplomat for the United States; all 
because he overheard some one say that a 
certain person was speaking, and because he 
dropped in for a few minutes to listen to the 
speaker. 

No one, who sees the revolving wheels of 
God’s providential government in the uphold¬ 
ing of nature and in the development of his¬ 
tory, can doubt that he personally stands 
related to the unfolding of the divine purpose. 
Trifles even are decisive in shaping our lives. 
A visit to some town, the meeting with a 
friend, the merest remark by an acquaintance, 
such comparatively insignificant things may 
change completely the course of our lives. 
Many a one can mention very slight incidents 
which have led to disproportionate results. A 
passing introduction perhaps gave him his life 
partner, his home, religious or otherwise, with 
its continually formative influence upon his 
character which has relations to eternity. 
Great and little events come alike within the 
vast sweep of the whirling wheels. 

In the second place, observe their compli- 


22 


The Trend of the Centuries 


j tw 


cated and yet straightforward movement. It 
was, we read, “ a wheel within a wheel.” The 
two circumferences cut each other at right 
angles, like the equator and meridian upon a 
globe. The involved wheels could thus go 
north, east, south and west without turning. 
“They turned not as they went.” We have 
here illustrated the mystery of divine provi¬ 
dence. As Cowper says: 


‘ God moves in a mysterious way 
His wonders to perform.” 


But like the child who holds the parent’s watch, 
we want to see the wheels go round, we want 
to learn the secret of the Lord in all his dark 
and hidden dealings with mankind and with 
the individual. Now God would teach us by 
the figure of the complicated wheels, that it is 
not ours to understand all his providences. 
And yet he assures that, while apparently 
there may be retrograde and lateral move¬ 
ments, on the whole the strangely constructed 
chariot goes “ straight forward.” He has in a 
measure shown us how this is, that our faith 
may be strengthened for crises beyond our com¬ 
prehension for the time being. 

In nature, for instance, it must have seemed 
a backward movement in the preparation of the 
earth for man when a rank vegetation was 


Wheels of Divine Providence 23 

made to spring up. But in our present great 
beds of coal from this very luxuriant and seem¬ 
ingly useless growth we see now the divine wis¬ 
dom and goodness. When great glaciers from 
northern regions came grinding over the 
ground, it must have seemed another retro¬ 
grade step in the vast process of evolving a 
globe fit for human habitation, but to-day we 
rejoice in a soil which was thus pulverized and 
made fruitful. The wheels crossed each other, 
and went in every direction, and yet the in¬ 
tricate chariot of providential preparation in 
the main went forward. 

Apply this to nations, and we see seemingly 
cross-purposes working out the will of God. 
In the march of Israel to Palestine, they were 
commanded to “ turn back ” before they re¬ 
ceived the culminating order to “ go forward.” 
They went right up to the borders of the Holy 
Land, and then they were turned back to 
wander forty years in the wilderness. It was 
a retrograde and yet in the end an advance 
movement. A generation of idolaters was cut 
off, and a disciplined people, capable of more 
rapid progress, were given the country flow¬ 
ing with milk and honey. The wheels moved 
backward and sideward, before they really went 
forward. 

This is also illustrated in classic' story. 


24 The Trend of the Centuries 

How did the celebrated Themistocles triumph 
at Salamis ? The Greeks, like the Israelites, 
were temporarily turned back. The famous 
Xerxes with his unnumbered hosts was stead¬ 
ily moving on to the conquest of all Greece. 
The Athenians had fled to their ships, and 
their wives and children to the adjacent island 
of Salamis. The Grecians, yielding to despair, 
resolved one night to steal away under cover 
of the darkness, giving up the unequal contest. 
Themistocles, their commander, argued against 
the disgraceful retreat that was proposed, but 
in vain, whereupon he determined to put them 
into a position where they would be forced to 
fight. Pretending to be friendly to the Persian 
general, he secretly sent him word that the 
Athenians were intending to escape that night, 
but that the flight could be prevented if ships 
were immediately sent to take possession of 
“all the straits and passages.’’ The Greeks 
thus by private advices from their own leader 
to the enemy were compelled to “ turn back ” 
from their meditated and attempted flight. 
Enclosed in a narrow channel, there was no 
alternative but to join issue with the foe. 
With Xerxes under canopy of gold on the 
mainland directing the forces there in com¬ 
bination with a fleet of a thousand ships on 
the sea, the Athenians in the desperateness of 


Wheels of Divine Providence 25 

the situation were nerved to the subliraest 
effort of their lives, and while their wives and 
children on the neighboring island of Salamis 
prayed as they had never done before, the men 
moved resolutely forward, with only one hun¬ 
dred and eighty sail against one thousand, 
but they conquered, and they gained undying 
fame instead of infamy, and ever since that 
eventful autumn day, 480 B. c., their praises 
have been sung by posterity.' 

There may be a retrograde before there is 
an advance movement. That is the way the 
whirling wheels of divine providence are con¬ 
structed. We have seen it repeatedly in the 
history of Christ’s Church. In the early cen¬ 
turies the Christians doubtless prayed for the 
conversion of the barbarian Goths. Those 
northern tribes were to be Christianized, but 
note the mysterious way in which the matter 
was accomplished. Some Goths swept down 
into Asia, and, returning, they took from a 
village in Cappadocia to their barbarian settle¬ 
ments north of the Danube certain Christians 
as captives. These slaves propagated the gos¬ 
pel among their masters. A descendant of 
theirs was the distinguished Ulphilas, who be¬ 
came bishop of the converted Goths, and who 
translated most of the Scriptures into their 
language. In other words, there was a back- 


26 The Trend of the Centuries 


ward movement before there was a forward 
one, Christians were enslaved before Goths 
were converted, and the one was in order 
eventually to the other. 

How was Ireland in the fifth century 
Christianized ? How was St. Patrick of Scot¬ 
tish birth to be made a missionary to the Irish, 
becoming ultimately their patron saint ? The 
common version of the story is, that his family 
first moved to Gaul or France, and there one 
day the youth of sixteen, before he had yet 
become a Christian, went down to the beach. 
It was simply a casual stroll that he took by 
the seashore. Just then there happened along 
some pirates, who landed, made him a pris¬ 
oner, and sold him into slavery in Ireland. 
There he was on Erin’s Isle, a bondman, un¬ 
converted, and yet he was destined to redeem 
that land for Christ. Did he understand the 
mysterious providence ? Certainly not, and if 
his great mission at that period of his life had 
been revealed to him, the wheels of provi : 
dence would have seemed to move backward. 
But that acquaintance with a superstitious and 
unevangelized people was the cause, in after 
years when he had recovered his freedom, of 
his returning to the country of his former cap¬ 
tivity to preach the gospel, which he mean¬ 
while had found precious in his own experi- 


Wheels of Divine Providence 


27 

ence. By such peculiar turns of fortune were 
the heathen Irish Christianized. There was 
wheel within wheel in the accomplishment of 
the divine purpose. 

Coming to individuals, there are just as 
mysterious providences; the wheels are no less 
complicated. Joseph received an intimation 
of his future greatness in the inspired dream 
of his brothers’ sheaves bowing to his. There 
was not much appearance of a fulfilment of 
that prophecy, when he was cast by them into 
the pit. Was that the way he was to be ad¬ 
vanced by providence ? It was, although he 
knew it not. The wheels moved backward. 
He was sold into Egypt, and the chariot gave 
a great lurch to one side. You remember all 
the gyrations of fortune, and circlings of 
wheels, but the chariot by which he was borne 
got him to the throne at last. A trying ex¬ 
perience of ours is often the very means of our 
advancement. Sir Walter Scott was lame'' 
from infancy, and that fact prevented him 
from entering upon military life, for which he 
had a strong predilection. He was in this 
providential way saved to literature. His^ 
mother therefore was accustomed to speak of 
the physical infirmity which disqualified him 
for the army as a blessing in disguise. More 
than once the great romancer himself said 


28 The Trend of the Centuries 


that if his father had left him a comfortable 
income, he probably would have spent his time 
in reading and not in writing. He claimed 
that he could write best when crowded, and 
hence the heavy debts hanging over his estate, 
renowned Abbottsford, gave him the mental 
quickening which redounded to his lasting 
fame and the world’s great benefit. Carlyle 
said, “ It is even a question, whether, had not 
want, discomfort and distress warrants been 
busy at Stratford-on-Avon, Shakespeare him¬ 
self had not lived killing calves or combing 
wool! ” Adversity may prove an ultimate 
blessing, and especially does a temporal set¬ 
back often set us spiritually forward. We are 
in the midst of whirling wheels whose compli¬ 
cated movement to all who are properly ex¬ 
ercised' by life’s discipline is in the end 
straightforward. 

Once more, the wheels of God’s triumphal car 
roll on with discriminating wisdom—“their 
rings,” it is said, “ full of eyes.” There are no 
blind forces even in nature. There is design, 
wonderful adjustment there. Hydrogen, oxy¬ 
gen and nitrogen are united in exactly the 
right proportions. Eliminate one of any of 
the fundamental elements that constitute the 
universe, and it would dissolve into ashes. 
The bee, that gathers its honey, by an ingen- 


Wheels of Divine Providence 29 

ious arrangement of providence distributes the 
pollen, the fecundating dust, and impregnates 
flowers which otherwise, say botanists, would 
become extinct. There are eyes in -the appar¬ 
ently unintelligent round of nature, eyes in the 
whirling wheels. 

And in history, the observant student can 
well say in the words of Scripture, “ The eyes 
of the Lord run to and fro throughout the 
whole earth.” It was no accident, when 
Charles Martel in the battle of Tours drove 
back the Saracens already established in Spain, 
and thereby saved Europe from the Moham¬ 
medan subjugation which in the eighth cen¬ 
tury seemed imminent. That was no acciden¬ 
tal turn in the fortunes of the false prophet, 
whose cause, in his followers, had hitherto been 
unchecked. God saw that he must interfere 
at that critical moment, or Europe would be 
lost to Christianity. The wheels of provi¬ 
dence had “ eyes.” 

It was no chance which raised the great 
storm, with whose help was defeated the mag¬ 
nificent Spanish Armada, moving for the de¬ 
cisive final blow to staggering Protestantism; 
it was no chance, whose breath originated the 
mighty tempest by which the “invincible” 
fleet was broken and scattered, but it was a 
blast of the Almighty, it was a providential 


30 The Trend of the Centuries 

turn of the wheel “ full of eyes.” Very appro¬ 
priately did the medal struck to commemorate 
the event bear this Scriptural motto, “Thou 
didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered 
them.” God saw that it was then to be de¬ 
cided which was to prevail, the old medieval or 
the new progressive civilization, and as he saw 
that the latter was better than the former for 
mankind, he made his chariot to move accord¬ 
ingly. There is infinite intelligence in the 
whirling wheels, as historic example after ex¬ 
ample proves. 

The landing of William of Orange in Eng¬ 
land in 1688 , and his enthronement there are 
quite generally recognized as having subserved 
the cause of civil and religious liberty. Ma¬ 
caulay in speaking of the very elements favor¬ 
ing the good cause at this point used the fol¬ 
lowing language: “The wind had blown 
strong from the east while the prince wished to 
sail down the Channel, had turned to the 
south when he wished to enter Torbay, had 
sunk to a calm during the disembarkation, and, 
as soon as the disembarkation was completed, 
had risen to a storm, and had met the pursuers 
in the face.” The winds, veering from one 
point of the compass to another and always in 
the interest of what was for the higher civiliza¬ 
tion, were whirling wheels as full of eyes as 


Wheels of Divine Providence 31 

they were precisely one hundred years before 
in contributing to the destruction of the 
Spanish Armada with an intelligence that 
seemed human, and that was likewise divine. 

Then this division of our theme has its in¬ 
dividual application. The illustrious Augus¬ 
tine of the fourth century is an example. His 
mother prayed for his conversion, but she 
worked against the very means which God 
used to bring about the desire of her heart. 
The dissolute youth proposed to go to Home, 
but she feared the effect upon him of the great, 
wicked city, and she tried in every way to de¬ 
feat his purpose. He, however, went, and 
later got still farther away from the maternal 
influence, as by advice of a friend he went on 
to Milan, where he heard the gifted Ambrose 
preach, under whose powerful presentation of 
the truth he was converted, being led into the 
Christian life by a course of action which she 
deprecated as most dangerous, for she did not 
want him to go to Rome and Milan. The 
faithful Monica could not see what was to be 
the outcome, but divine providence was not 
blind ; the wheels, which whirled the son hither 
and thither, from city to city, were “full of 
eyes,” and from the beginning saw what was 
to be the happy end. 

At the close of the line of thought which 


32 The Trend of the Centuries 

has been pursued, we can see the significance 
of what in the prophet’s vision was above the 
wheels. To crown the whole there was the 
appearance of a man, even of the sympathetic 
Son of man, outspreading over his wondrous 
chariot a bright canopy. “There was the 
likeness of a firmament,” we read, resplendent 
as crystal, and giving unity to all that was 
revealed, and we are reminded of a cathedral 
at Pisa which has, we are informed, a musical 
dome. The visitor is surprised, as every foot¬ 
fall, every discordant noise, is caught by that 
magic roof, and returned in exquisite harmony. 
The hum of a great congregation swells away 
in the high spaces like the distant roll of a 
great organ. So the whir of the revolving 
machinery of divine providence, the rattle of 
God’s chariot on the pavement, every groan, 
every cry of distress from the bottom of the 
wheels rising from those who have been rolled 
under in reverses of fortune, all are turned into 
a heavenly symphony by the crystal dome 
of the celestial firmament. Under the bright 
overarching of a Christian faith, all the harsh 
discords of earth are softened and blended into 
the soothing melody of heaven. 

Ours, therefore, can be an unfaltering trust, 
since we know, however various and trying 
may be our experiences, that the Supreme 


Wheels of Divine Providence 33 

Ruler doeth all things well, and that some day 
his most mysterious dealings with us will be 
made clear. In that temple above, with a 
dome more wonderful than that of the cathe¬ 
dral at Pisa, the trials and temptations of the 
present without a solitary exception will be 
seen to have been in entire harmony with the 
great truth of a kind, overruling providence 
whereby all things have been made to work 
together for good to us who have loved God. 


















THE GULF STREAM OF MESSIANIC 
PROPHECY 


“We have found him, of whom Moses in the law, and 
the prophets, did write, Jesus of Nazareth.”— John 1: 45. 

‘ 1 And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, 
he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things con¬ 
cerning himself.”— Luke 24 : 27. 

“ All things must needs be fulfilled, which are written in 
the law of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms, con¬ 
cerning me.”— Luke 24 : 44. 


II 


THE GULF STREAM OF MESSIANIC PROPHECY 

Europeans long noted with a curious inter¬ 
est articles floated to them over the ocean 
from unknown shores. A Portuguese pilot 
had seen upon the waves a piece of rudely 
carved wood. Pine-trees and cane-stalks and 
other vegetable growths that were unfamiliar 
to Europe and its neighboring isles made peo¬ 
ple wonder whence these came. On the coasts 
of Ireland and Scotland and Norway was 
thrown by the billows from time to time what 
evidently came from tropical forests. There 
were even reports of canoes, and of human 
bodies with strange bronze features, constitut¬ 
ing part of the sea’s drift from the west. 
Whence came all these ? No one knew, but 
an increasing number were led to believe in an 
undiscovered continent as the source of the 
mysterious freightage of old Neptune. Hope 
and belief were thus strengthened in Colum¬ 
bus, and he sailed away to solve the problem, 
and in 1492 America was discovered. 

It was the now well understood Gulf Stream 
37 


38 The Trend of the Centuries 

which, bearing this and that from a far-away 
country, awoke expectation and faith in Euro¬ 
peans. This mighty ocean current of warm 
water in the midst of cold, at the behest of 
the continually blowing trade-winds of the 
tropics, rushes forth from our Gulf of Mexico 
—a river which is two thousand times larger 
than the Mississippi, and which is sometimes 
forty and again three hundred miles and more 
wide. It rolls northeastward along the entire 
United States coast, though at some distance 
therefrom, then strikes across the vast Atlan¬ 
tic, through its very heart, toward Europe, 
and after many a turn, north and south and 
east, it completes its course of over three thou¬ 
sand miles, to bless with a temperate clime 
and a luxuriant vegetation regions that other¬ 
wise would be frozen and barren and desolate. 
Its heat is said to be sufficient to “ melt daily 
a mass of iron as large as Mount Washington,” 
and this it distributes over western Europe, 
even Arctic? cold being thus modified with 
salutary effect. 

Now the Gulf Stream not only carried 
warmth and fruitfulness across the Atlantic, 
but it was also the means of starting the 
course of empire westward by carrying to the 
old world evidence of a new continent. By 
actual experiment on a sufficiently large scale 


Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 39 

we could to-day prove that articles committed 
to the Gulf Stream at its source as it dashes 
past southern Florida would ultimately be car¬ 
ried to points where expectation of old was 
born by reason of similar drift that then ap¬ 
peared. Like this ocean current is the stream 
of Messianic Prophecy flowing down through 
the past and widening in its course and bless¬ 
ing every nation it touches by awaking a great 
hopefulness. 

Placing ourselves at a time just prior to 
the great discovery of the Kingdom of the 
Truth, we find that many devout souls were 
in a state of expectancy. Luke tells us that 
the aged Simeon was “looking for the conso¬ 
lation of Israel,” and was confident that “ he 
should not see death, before he had seen the 
Lord’s Christ,” and that the saintly Anna was 
similarly minded, and that there were still 
others who were “ looking for the redemption 
of Jerusalem.” Mark describes the wealthy 
Joseph of Arimathaea, that “councillor of hon¬ 
orable estate,” as one who was “looking for 
the kingdom of God.” Matthew informs us 
of wise men coming from the East with the 
same pulsing hope. Indeed, the Kew Testa¬ 
ment is confessedly full of what Wordsworth 
would call “ intimations of immortality,” of a 
better day to dawn, even (as Zacharias proph- 


40 The Trend of the Centuries 

esied) “ the day spring from on high.” So fer¬ 
vent was the Messianic expectation in the first 
centmy, that Josephus says, “That which 
chiefly excited the Jews to war was an am¬ 
biguous prophecy, which was also found in the 
sacred books, that at that time some one within 
their country should arise who would obtain the 
empire of the whole world,” and this Jewish 
writer had nothing sadder to record than the 
rise and fall of various false Christs. 

Classical writers also of the beginning of 
the Christian era testify to the same expecta¬ 
tion. Suetonius, who wrote the “ Lives of the 
Caesars,” says: “ A firm persuasion had long 
prevailed through all the East that it was fated 
for the empire of the world at that time to 
devolve on some who should go forth from 
Judaea.” Tacitus speaks of a similar belief 
being current, “ that the East would renew its 
strength, and they that should go forth from 
Judaea should be rulers of the world.” Though 
Yirgil, 40 b. c., may have written his fourth 
Eclogue in honor of a son of a literary friend, 
he yet could hardly have used such significant 
language, as is found in this poem, had he not 
caught the spirit of what have been called “ the 
unconscious prophecies of heathendom.” How 
almost Messianic are these lines, for example, 
from the Eclogue: 


Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 41 

u Come, claim thine honors, for the time draws nigh, 
Babe of immortal race, the wondrous seed of Jove ! 

Lo, at thy coming how the starry spheres 
Are moved to trembling, and the earth below, 

And widespread, seas, and the blue vault of heaven ! 
How all things joy to greet the rising Age ! ” 


No doubt therefore can exist as to the fact of 
a peculiarly expectant mental state about the 
time of the actual advent of the Lord. 

Whence came these rising hopes ? They 
came from what had floated down the stream 
of Messianic prophecy from a very remote 
time, just as the drift of the Gulf Stream, 
upon being carried to Europe, made certain 
choice and prophetic spirits like Columbus be¬ 
lieve in another and a new world. And as we 
might commit ourselves to the warm current 
issuing from its source in the Gulf of Mexico 
till we were landed where canoes and pines in 
1492 went ashore to stir the old world into the 
new life of modern discovery, so can we start 
with the fountain head of Messianic prophecy 
in the tropics of Eden, and by simply follow¬ 
ing the current find ourselves eventually at 
the “fulness of time” when the Messiah did 
appear, and was recognized by reason of the 
prophecies then culminating and having in 
him their manifest fulfilment. 

Nor will there be about them anything 


42 The Trend of the Centuries 

vague and uncertain, as in the oracular say¬ 
ings of classic story. You recollect, for in¬ 
stance, how it was in the temple of Isis at 
Pompeii (whose Last Days Bulwer delineates), 
how the statue moved its head, opened its lips, 
and with a hollow voice gave forth its oracle 
for some consulting merchants whose ships 
were to sail next day for Alexandria. This 
was the predictive utterance: 

“ There are waves like chargers that meet and glow, 
There are graves ready wrought in the rocks below : 

On the brow of the future the dangers lour, 

But blest are your barks in the fearful hour.” 

Nothing could be more plain, said a worshiper 
who added, “ There is to be a storm at sea, as 
there very often is at the beginning of au¬ 
tumn, but our vessels are to be saved.” The 
priests themselves, however, did not seem so 
certain in their own private hearts. One of 
them remarked to another upon the improve¬ 
ment in the voice of the statue since a me¬ 
chanical change had been suggested and made, 
while the other said that if the storm did come 
and did even wreck the vessels, yet the oracle 
would prove true, for in one sense ships at the 
bottom of the sea were “ blest ” in being for¬ 
ever at rest. The famous Delphic Oracle once 
said to the rich Croesus who consulted it, “ If 


Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 43 

Croesus crosses the Halys, and prosecutes a 
war with Persia, a mighty empire will be over¬ 
thrown ; ” and it was even so, but it was his 
own empire. The oracle had so worded its 
wisdom, that, whatever the issue, it would not 
have to recede and retract. 

The Messianic prophecies are not thus 
equivocal, capable of being taken either way, 
conceived with the very idea of deceiving. 
They will rather be seen on examination to be 
so true and minute, that we will exclaim with 
Philip, “ We have found him, of whom Moses 
in the law, and the prophets, did write, Jesus 
of Nazareth.” In selecting some predictions 
about Christ, we naturally would like to know 
those to which he himself called attention on 
that eventful occasion, when, walking with 
the two doubting disciples toward Emmaus, 
he began with Moses, and “ interpreted to 
them in all the scriptures the things concern¬ 
ing himself.” But we are left in ignorance as 
to the particular prophetic forecasts upon 
which he commented, except that he indicated 
his main lines of thought in that he said, “ All 
things must needs be fulfilled, which are writ¬ 
ten in the law of Moses, and the prophets, and 
the psalms, concerning me.” 

Under suggestion from this division of the 
Old Testament into the law, the prophets, and 


44 The Trend of the Centuries 

the psalms, except that these terms will be 
taken in the modern and not in the ancient 
sense, we will weigh anchor on the Gulf 
Stream of Messianic Prophecy by starting at 
the very beginning with “ the law of Moses.” 
We cannot stop to discuss each prediction in 
detail, because for the present we desire to 
get the truer effect of a wide sweep of pro¬ 
phetic utterances, not as they may be, but as 
they generally have been interpreted. We 
cannot tarry either to note the primary and 
secondary references which are acknowledged 
in the predictions. Nor does it come within 
the scope of our present trend of thought to 
debate disputed dates of books which at the 
latest long antedate the verifications. We 
will give ourselves at once to the current, and 
move rapidly on, as the majestic stream of 
Messianic Prophecy may naturally and easily 
lead. 

At the very dawn of Biblical history, we 
are issuing from the tropical beauty of Eden 
with the prophetic announcement that the 
seed of the woman should “ bruise ” the head 
of the serpent, which had bruised the heel of 
humanity at the time of the temptation and 
the fall in the garden. The seed of the 
woman was to bruise the head of the serpent. 
That primeval promise must have meant 


Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 45 

something, and could have signified nothing 
less than a great recovery on the part of fnan- 
kind from the injury sustained in the calamity 
of original sin. 

We sweep along the current, and we next 
find that the blessing is to come, not only in 
the line of the race, but through the Semitic 
branch thereof, as the rhythmical words of 
Noah show: 

“ Blessed be the Lord, the God of Shem; 
And let Canaan be his servant. 

God enlarge Japheth, 

And let him dwell in the tents of Shem. ,, 

Therein is briefly outlined by the seer the re¬ 
ligious ascendency of Shem, the political 
primacy of Japheth, and the social degrada¬ 
tion of Canaan ; and the descendants of these 
have answered to the forecast, in the servitude 
of large portions of the human family like the 
Canaanites and Africans, in the prominence 
and power of the Japhetic nations specially 
centered in Europe, and in the religion of the 
world, Christianity, having come from the 
Semitic peoples of Asia. Shem has had the 
preeminence foretold in that the Messianic 
stream flowed by his tents. 

The current on which we are being borne 
takes another turn, and we are in the line of 


46 The Trend of the Centuries 

Jewish descent on onr way toward the prom¬ 
ised Christ, in that to Abraham was the assur¬ 
ance given, “ In thy seed shall all the nations 
of the earth be blessed.” There is thus a 
chosen nationality for the transmission of the 
blessing. We all know how the Hebrews 
were entrusted with the oracles of God, and 
furnished the ancestry of the Lord. 

Still more definite is the designation, next, 
of the Messianic tribe , as one is singled out of 
the twelve tribes of the nation by the glowing 
prophecy: 

“ The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, 
Nor the ruler’s staff from between his feet, 
Until Shiloh come; 

And unto him shall the obedience of the 
peoples be.” 

That Christ did spring from Judah is a simple 
matter of history, and it is also well known 
that he came before the overthrow of Jeru¬ 
salem by the Roman Titus when the scepter 
of power did depart from the Jewish nation. 

So strong now has become the current of 
Messianic Prophecy, that even the half¬ 
heathen seer, Balaam, is impelled by the sight 
of the Israelites from his position on a hill¬ 
top commanding a magnificent view of them 
in the valley, to break out into the rapturous 
words, which fairly throb with the thought of 


Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 47 

the splendid destinies wrapt up in the peculiar 
people: 

“ I see him, but not now: 

I behold him, but not nigh: 

There shall come forth a star out of Jacob, 
And a sceptre shall rise out of IsraeL’ , 

We hear the echo of that inspired utterance 
afterward in Deuteronomy and Joshua and 
Micah and hTehemiah, and the familiar Star 
of Bethlehem is its brilliant fulfilment. 

The tide is full set, the course of the current 
is unmistakable, when Moses himself gives 
his great deliverance, “ The Lord thy God will 
raise up unto thee a prophet from the midst 
of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me; unto 
him ye shall hearken.” Very naturally the 
woman of Samaria shared the hope of the 
Samaritans, who received the five books of 
Moses, while she said with all confidence, “ I 
know that Messiah cometh (which is called 
Christ).” She must have often read in her 
Samaritan Bible of the coming of the prophet 
like unto Moses, and from such clear words 
she could not have been otherwise than ex¬ 
pectant, not only of a Messianic age, but also 
of a personal Messiah, and the Lord himself 
must have had this among other Mosaic proph¬ 
ecies in mind when he said, Moses “wrote 


48 The Trend of the Centuries 

of me.” Thus have we swept through “ the 
law of Moses ” on our swelling Gulf Stream. 

Another grand sweep will take us through 
the “psalms.” In the particular family line 
of the “ sweet psalmist ” himself was the Mes¬ 
siah to appear, for repeatedly occurs a promise 
like this: 

“ I will not lie unto David ; 

His seed shall endure for ever, 

And his throne as the sun before me.” 

And he died in hope, his “ last words ” being 
about 

“ One that ruleth over men righteously,” 
while he added, 

“ Yerily my house is not so with God ; 

Yet he hath made with me an everlasting 
covenant.” 

He felt that a son or descendant of his was to 
have perpetual dominion, a “ son ” whom he 
yet in one psalm called “ Lord ”—an anomaly 
with which, you recollect, Christ puzzled the 
Jews of his day. How definite were the 
manifold prophecies which named David as an 
ancestor of the Messiah appears, when in the 
first century the common title of the expected 
Christ was “ Son of David.” 

Floating swiftly along our Gulf Stream we 


Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 49 

gather other Messianic material from the 
psalms. “ Neither wilt thou suffer thine 
holy one to see corruption,” had very little 
application to the psalmist, for his flesh did 
see corruption, and his tomb could be seen at 
the time of Peter’s Pentecostal address, but 
the prophetic words did receive a most strik¬ 
ing fulfilment in the resurrection of great 
David’s greater Son. There are also in the 
psalms very significant details. When we 
read these various minute touches, 

“ And in my thirst they gave me vinegar 
to drink,” 

“ They part my garments among them, 

And upon my vesture do they cast lots,” 

“ They pierced my hands and my feet,” 

we are brought very near to the cross of Cal¬ 
vary with its familiar but sad incidents, though 
the descriptive lines were written hundreds of 
years before the events thus foreshadowed. 

How long is the Gulf Stream ? over three 
thousand miles? We have gone over two of 
the millennial divisions of our Messianic 
Stream “in the law of Moses,” and in “the 
psalms,” and now we sweep out into the times 
of the “ prophets ” themselves. Isaiah stands 
forth preeminent. He prophesies, “ Behold, a 
virgin shall conceive, and bear a son, and shall 


50 The Trend of the Centuries 

call his name Immanuel,” that is, God with 
us; likewise called “ Wonderful, Counsellor, 
Mighty God.” Here we instinctively think of 
the Virgin Mary, and of her firstborn with 
his divine characteristics. The same prophet 
speaks of a land “ glorious, by the way of the 
sea, beyond Jordan, Galilee of the nations. 
The people that walked in darkness have seen 
a great light,” and we have therein the whole 
Galilaean ministry by the Sea of Gennesaret 
pictured as with a single stroke of a master 
artist’s brush. In that marvelous fifty-third 
chapter of Isaiah, which has made infidels be¬ 
lievers, and which has confounded skeptics 
who would not be convinced, we have a vivid 
portrayal of the suffering Messiah, so enigmat¬ 
ical till the Christ of history exactly filled the x 
prophetic outline, even to minutiae, for when we 
read that the wondrous Person “ opened not 
his mouth,” we recall the patient silence which 
was so inexplicable to Pilate. When we read 
again, “ They made his grave with the wicked, 
and with the rich in his death,” we are struck 
with the correspondence to subsequent facts, 
when the Lord wq,s “ with the wicked ” in being 
crucified between two thieves, and was “with 
the rich in his death ” in that he was buried in 
the private garden of the wealthy Joseph, while 
the rich Nicodemus brought for his burial a 


Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 51 

hundred pounds of fragrant “ myrrh and 
aloes.” 

From Isaiah we pass to Micah, and hear him 
prophesying that out of humble Bethlehem 
“ shall one come forth unto me that is to be 
ruler in Israel; whose goings forth are from 
of old, from everlasting,” and this was suffi¬ 
ciently specific to make the chief priests and 
scribes more than seven hundred years later 
officially declare that Bethlehem was to be the 
birthplace of the promised One. 

Subsequent prophets never for a moment 
lose sight of the coming Messiah. Jeremiah 
says, “I will raise unto David a righteous 
Branch; ” Ezekiel says, “ My servant David 
shall be king over them; and they all shall 
have one shepherd; ” and Daniel says that 
after a mystical seventy weeks “ shall the 
anointed one be cut off,” “ to make an end of 
sins, and to make reconciliation for iniquity, 
and to bring in everlasting righteousness.” 

Haggai says, “ I will fill this house with 
glory,” “ The latter glory of this house shall 
be greater than the former,” but as the second 
temple was not specially glorious of itself— 
was indeed so much inferior to the first that 
the older Jews actually “wept” with disap¬ 
pointment—the greater glory promised for it 
must have been none other than the coming to 


52 The Trend of the Centuries 

it of the Messiah. He therefore was connected 
by this prophecy with this second house, whose 
rebuilding by Herod was never counted a third 
structure, and whose destruction by the Eoman 
armies 70 A. D., fixed and defined the time 
within which the Christ should appear, and 
before the post-exilic temple was forever de¬ 
stroyed there did come to it One who was 
glorious, “fairer than the children of men.” 

Zechariah’s predictions, too, were minute, 
presenting still other features by which the 
Christ might be recognized. Said this prophet, 
“They shall look unto me whom they have 
pierced,” and the crucified One with his pierced 
side comes to view through the intervening 
ages. The King, whom this same sacred writer 
represents as coming “lowly, and riding upon 
an ass,” while yet “ his dominion shall be from 
sea to sea,” suggests the triumphal entry into 
Jerusalem, and the still more triumphant 
march of the present around the earth. The 
passage, “They weighed for my hire thirty 
pieces of silver,” which were cast “unto the 
potter, in the house of the Lord,” makes dra¬ 
matic that scene of Judas throwing down in 
the temple the same number of silver pieces, 
wherewith the innocent blood of his Master 
had been betrayed. 

What a wealth of Messianic delineations is 


Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy 53 

being gathered while we are being hurried 
along the Stream of Prophecy! We reach the 
flood-tide in that last of the prophets, Malachi, 
who exclaims with exultant hope, “ Behold, I 
send my messenger, and he shall prepare the 
way before me: and the Lord, whom ye seek, 
shall suddenly come to his temple,” and we see 
at once John the Baptist, and Jesus of Nazareth 
whose way he prepared by announcing his com¬ 
ing and by pointing him out as the long-ex¬ 
pected Lamb of God. 

Our Gulf Stream of Messianic Prophecy, 
which we have been following through “the. 
laAV of Moses, and the prophets, and the psalms,” 
all the way from beauteous Eden, breaks at 
last upon the first century with the melody of 
the ocean’s gleaming surf, with the musical 
sound of “ many waters ” that sparkle with a 
gladsome light. “We have found him, of 
whom Moses in the law, and the prophets, did 
write,” and we have found him by the minutiae 
of prophetic utterance through thousands of 
years. To vary the figure permeating all we 
have said, as a red strand runs through all the 
cordage of the British navy, we have traced 
through whole millenniums the scarlet thread of 
Messianic Prophecy. Or shifting our point of 
view yet again, as we glance backward through 
the vista of centuries, we are reminded of a not 


54 The Trend of the Centuries 

infrequent scene in the mountains. Alpine 
ranges, like Virgil’s “ Ossa piled on Pelion,” 
stretch away for miles, peak succeeding to 
peak, and in the early morning, while dark 
shadows lie along the valleys and far up the 
steep slopes, summit after summit, every Mont 
Blanc is gilded by'the rising sun. So a long 
sweep of vision into the past shows a succes¬ 
sion of mountain-tops golden with the rays of 
the Sun of righteousness, and while there are 
many low vales unlighted, the towering heights 
are so illumined with glowing prophecies, that 
there is one stream of Messianic light from 
Eden to the Cross, and the radiance reaches to 
the present, and shall go corruscating down to 
the remotest future. 


THE HEROIC JEREMIAH AND THE 
DOWNFALL OF JUDAH 


11 For, behold, I have made thee this day a defenced city, 
and an iron pillar, and brazen walls, against the whole land, 
against the kings of Judah, against the princes thereof, and 
against the people of the land.”—J er. 1: 18. 


Ill 


THE HEROIC JEREMIAH AND THE DOWNFALL 
OF JUDAH 

We are to consider at this time the heroic 
Jeremiah and the downfall of Judah. Though 
he predicted desolation to the kingdom, and 
though he lived to see the destruction wrought, 
he was hopeful for the future. He believed 
God’s purpose would ultimately triumph. 

What was the problem of the Old Testa¬ 
ment dispensation? It was to develop a 
chosen people who were to be a blessing to all 
mankind. We can see the long process of ac¬ 
complishment. The patriarch becomes the 
tribe, which in turn becomes ten tribes, and 
then a nation confessedly entrusted with the 
truth as no other nationality was. But how 
often we see apparent failure stamped on the 
movement which we had felt to be divine ! 

There was, for instance, the oppression in 
Egypt. This can no longer be regarded as 
fable, for archaeology has in our day brought 
forth from his burial the mummy of the great op¬ 
pressor himself, Rameses II, which now adorns 
57 


58 The Trend of the Centuries 

a museum at Ghizeh on the Nile, while one of 
the store-cities, Pithom, which he built by his 
Hebrew slaves, has actually been unearthed. 
Egypt’s own records are no longer silent on 
this matter. A stone has lately risen from the 
dust in confirmation of the Bible story. The 
eminent Egyptologist, Dr. Petrie, in excava¬ 
tions at Thebes during 1895-96, brought to light 
a black slab over ten feet high, on which three 
different Pharaohs had successively cut and 
erased inscriptions, when Merenptah, the sup¬ 
posed Pharaoh of the Exodus, coveting it for a 
temple he was erecting, turned its thrice in¬ 
scribed face to the wall, and on its back which 
he made its front he engraved a battle hymn, 
which includes this statement, “ Israel is 
crushed, is without seed.” Surely the cruel 
Pharaoh, with whom Scripture has made us 
familiar, did crush the Israelites in requiring 
them to make bricks without straw, and if 
Professor Sayce of Oxford is correct in taking 
the words “ without seed ” to mean “ without 
offspring,” there is a striking confirmation of 
the Biblical account of the slaying of the male 
children of the Hebrews. Or if the meaning 
be that Israel was stripped of its grain, of its 
seed in the materialistic sense, this is equally 
confirmatory of the oppression described in 
Exodus. But Israel survived this slavery, at- 


The Heroic Jeremiah 


59 

tested by both the Mosaic and monumental 
records, because she had God on her side. 

Again, when the people escaped from bond¬ 
age and settled in Palestine and grew to be a 
resplendent kingdom under David and Solo¬ 
mon, disaster that seemed irremediable came 
once more in the disruption of the nation into 
northern and southern powers, into Israel and 
Judah. And as if that were not enough, after 
about two centuries of this divided existence, 
Israel fell before Assyria, and her people were 
carried away to be forever known as the “ ten 
lost tribes.” On this point, too, we have the 
monuments confirming the Scriptures. Of the 
downfall of Israel, the northern kingdom, 
whose capital was the city of Samaria, the 
book of Kings says: “ The king of Assyria 
took Samaria, and carried Israel away unto 
Assyria.” Sargon’s record for the year 722 B. 
c., is, “ The city Samaria I besieged, 27,290 in¬ 
habitants of it I carried away captive.” How 
could there be-otherwise than dismay at such 
a calamity? Was God after all to be de¬ 
feated ? 

But worse was to follow, for Judah’s turn 
came next. As early as Hezekiah came Sen¬ 
nacherib for the humiliation of the southern 
kingdom. Here also the Scriptural and mon¬ 
umental records are in harmony. The inspired 


6 o The Trend of the Centuries 


penman says: “ In the fourteenth year of king 
Hezekiah did Sennacherib king of Assyria 
come up against all the fenced cities of Judah, 
and took them.” On grotesque bulls, winged 
and human-headed, Sennacherib inscribed: 
“ As for Hezekiah of Judah, who had not sub¬ 
mitted to my yoke, forty-six of his strong cities 
. . . I captured. . . . Hezekiah himself 

I shut up like a bird in a cage in Jerusalem, 
his royal city.” 

But the final overthrow of Judah did not 
come tilj. Nebuchadnezzar of Babylon appeared 
on the stage of action, with successive depor¬ 
tations of Jews from about 605 B. c., and on¬ 
ward up to the great catastrophe itself, which, 
with the razing to the ground of Jerusalem, 
must have seemed an irretrievable loss. It is 
this of which we are to treat somewhat in de¬ 
tail, with the prophet Jeremiah as the center 
around which the story revolves. He was the 
most prominent figure through the reigns of 
several kings. We shall see him not only 
forecasting the future, but much more partici¬ 
pating in the activities of his own generation. 
His great aim was to save Judah from the 
threatened destruction. 

The country lay between the powerful king¬ 
doms of Egypt and Assyria or Babylonia, and 
it had to be a dependency of the one or the 


The Heroic Jeremiah 61 

other, and therefore there were always two 
parties in the court, according as this or that 
foreign alliance was urged. Jeremiah doubt¬ 
less regretted that a choice had to be made at 
all as between the two, but he recognized the 
situation, that Judah, as Stanley has said, was 
like “ a hunted animal—now flying, now stand¬ 
ing at bay—between two huge beasts of prey, 
which, whilst their main object is to devour 
each other, turn aside from time to time to 
snatch at the smaller victim that has crossed 
their midway path.” The prophet had the 
foresight to see in Babylon and not in Egypt 
the coming power, and hence he advocated the 
cultivating of friendly relations with the for¬ 
mer, though in this he stood practically alone, 
as he did in the religious reform which he 
preached, there being against him, according 
to his prophecy, kings, princes, priests and 
people. 

When in youth he was called to his great 
prophetic work, he was reluctant to put his 
shoulder to the wheel. He naturally was of a 
timid and shrinking disposition, and he pleaded 
that he could not speak and that he was but a 
child. But God promised to make him “ a de- 
fenced city, and an iron pillar, and brazen 
walls, against the whole land.” He therefore 
obeyed the divine summons, though in the com- 


62 The Trend of the Centuries 


plications that subsequently arose, and with no 
wife or children to comfort him in his lonely 
hours, he sometimes wished that he had never 
been born. He could have said with our Eng¬ 
lish dramatist: 

“The time is out of joint. O cursed spite, 

That ever I was born to set it right.” 

He first saw the light in the small village 
of Anathoth, an hour’s walk from Jerusalem. 
There also he received his prophetic call, 
while he was a young man not far from the 
age of twenty. His preaching of a reforma¬ 
tion was not popular with his fellow villagers, 
who plotted against his life. From the nest 
of conspirators at his home he escaped, and 
Jerusalem became the scene of his labors, 
while the pious King Josiah doubtless sec¬ 
onded his efforts. Indeed, five years after the 
prophet’s call, in the repairing of the temple 
was found the long-lost book of the law, which 
has been presumed to be our book of Deuter¬ 
onomy, and this hastened the reformation, of 
which there was sad need. Idolatry had been 
substituted for the temple worship of Jehovah. 
Incense was burned to the queen of heaven. 
In Jerusalem there were as many altars, we 
are informed, as there were streets, and we 
are reminded of Athens in the days of Paul, 


The Heroic Jeremiah 


6 3 

who was amazed at the multitude of statues 
everywhere, and who may have thought of 
the Roman satirist’s remark that it was easier 
to find a god than a man in the Grecian 
capital. There was the same lack of men in the 
holy city, and hence the significance of these 
words of Jeremiah, “ Run to and fro through 
the streets of Jerusalem, and see now, and 
know, and seek in the broad places thereof, if 
ye can find a man.” We recall again what 
classic story relates regarding that quaint old 
philosopher, Diogenes, who went peering 
through the streets of Athens at noonday with 
a lantern, and who when asked what he was 
looking for replied that he was trying to find 
a man. There prevailed also Sabbath-break¬ 
ing and perjury and theft and murder and 
impurity on every high hill and under every 
green tree. Human sacrifices were offered to 
the fire-god Moloch. 

Do you wonder that Jeremiah prophesied 
dire evils unless there was a reformation ? Ho 
nation to-day can long survive with the very 
foundations of morality and religion giving 
way, with desecration of the Lord’s Day, with 
drunkenness, with political corruption and 
social vice, with all such evils increasing. 
The prophet was faithful, and declared that 
unless there was a change the Lord’s word 


64 The Trend of the Centuries 

was, “ I will make Jerusalem heaps, a dwelling 
place of jackals; and I will make the cities of 
Judah a desolation.” Then this vision of fear¬ 
ful import was made known : “ I see a seeth¬ 
ing caldron ; and the face thereof is from the 
north,” indicating that “ out of the north evil 
shall break forth upon all the inhabitants of 
the land.” Scythian and Chaldean invasions 
were thus pictured. A vast metal vessel was 
seen boiling furiously upon a pile of wood. 
As the inflammable materials consumed, the 
pot was gradually settling on the southward 
side, and in time would overturn and pour its 
hot contents over poor Judah. 

Such were the realistic warnings given, and 
when there came the providential finding of 
the law with similar threatenings, a great 
revolution was wrought in the sentiments and 
lives of the people, and the predicted disaster 
seemed likely to be averted, till there came 
the untimely death of King Josiah. Pharaoh- 
nechoh was marching against Assyria, when 
Josiah mistakenly went forth to obstruct his ad¬ 
vance, perhaps under pressure from the Baby¬ 
lonian party, and an arrow shot at a venture 
smote Judah’s king, and he was carried home 
in his chariot a dying man. Great were the 
lamentations of the nation, and Jeremiah 
wrote an elegy that voiced the general sor- 


The Heroic Jeremiah 65 

row; henceforth there were troublous times 
indeed. 

The second son of Josiah was elevated to 
the vacant throne under the name of Jehoahaz, 
but Necoh in three months, returning from an 
Assyrian victory, deposed him, and carried him 
off to Egypt where he died in his captivity, 
and his mournful fate stirred the sympathetic 
Jeremiah to say, “Weep not for the dead, 
neither bemoan him: but weep sore for him 
that goeth away; for he shall return no more, 
nor see his native country.” 

Pharaoh-nechoh placed over Judah as his vas¬ 
sal the elder son of Josiah, namely, Jehoiakim, 
who favored the reaction to idolatry. To pay 
his Egyptian tribute he exacted heavy taxes. 
He also proposed to make his reign splendid 
as a great building era. He erected a magnifi¬ 
cent palace, which he roofed with cedar and 
painted with vermilion, while he compelled 
free citizens to work upon it “ without wages.” 
He was not a monarch who would listen to 
unfavorable prophecies, and one prophet, who 
had fled for his life into Egypt, he had brought 
back and slain. 

How did the new order of things please 
Jeremiah ? He began to declare what he felt 
to be the solemn truth, as he asserted that 
Jerusalem should yet be like Shiloh, which, as 


66 The Trend of the Centuries 


every one knew, was a complete ruin. For 
this prophecy he was mobbed, but he was res¬ 
cued by some influential friends. Meanwhile, 
Nebuchadnezzar, the great conqueror, ap¬ 
peared on the eastern horizon, and before him 
Pharaoh-nechoh went down. People fled in 
consternation before the fierce warriors of the 
Babylonian monarch, and even some gypsy¬ 
like Rechabites who were accustomed to a 
wandering tent life were seen in Jerusalem 
with their strange customs. Jeremiah, know¬ 
ing their habits of abstinence from wine, and 
desiring to draw a present lesson, proposed to 
entertain them with the flowing bowl, which 
they at once refused in accordance with a 
pledge handed down, they said, from a re¬ 
vered ancestor. The prophet immediately com¬ 
mended their spirit of obedience, and wished 
that Jerusalem might obey the Lord, and sub¬ 
mit to the approaching Nebuchadnezzar. He 
shivered a bottle to atoms in the presence of 
spectators to show what awaited the holy 
city. 

He was arrested and put in the stocks, but 
as Paul from his Roman imprisonment wrote 
epistles that still live, and as Bunyan wrote 
his Pilgrim’s Progress in Bedford jail, and as 
Luther translated the Bible into German at 
the Wart burg Castle, where he was detained, 


The Heroic Jeremiah 


6 7 

so Jeremiah, by the hand of Baruch, wrote out 
his prophecies when he was restrained from 
going abroad to speak the truth, when be en¬ 
joyed at most only a restricted freedom. On 
the occasion of a public fast he sent his aman¬ 
uensis to read what had been written to the 
throngs about the temple, and a profound im- * 
pression being made he was summoned into 
the presence of the princes, who on hearing 
the scroll read advised him and his master to 
secrete themselves, as they valued their lives, 
for the matter would have to be reported to 
the king. When Jehoiakim had heard the 
facts, and had learned that the roll was avail¬ 
able for his majesty, he sent for it, and what 
followed is one of the most dramatic scenes in 
Biblical history. 

The king on a December day sat warming 
himself over a charcoal fire on a brasier in his 
winter palace, and a courtier began to unroll 
the scroll and to read. A column was fin¬ 
ished, two or three columns more were read, 
and the contents of another column were be¬ 
ing made known, when the king became 
furious at what he considered treasonable 
sentiments, and with a penknife he cut the 
parchment into shreds, which he flung into 
the fire, where they curled for a moment, 
one by one, into a beautiful blaze, and then 


68 The Trend of the Centuries 


dissolved into ashes. Some of the courtiers 
tried to dissuade him from such a summary 
and contemptuous destruction of what a holy 
prophet had written, but he did not care to 
listen to a prophecy which had declared, “ The 
king of Babylon shall certainly come and de¬ 
stroy this land.” He seemed to imagine that 
the burning of the prediction would prevent 
its fulfilment. 

The burned prophecy of Jeremiah was 
straightway rewritten, with additions, one of 
which said of the king, “ His dead body shall 
be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the 
night to the frost.” There came first, how¬ 
ever, ignominious submission to the very 
Babylonian monarch whose coming had been 
foretold, as Jehoiakim was carried in chains, 
with others, including Daniel, to Babylon, 
only to be reinstated after swearing alle¬ 
giance to his lord, Nebuchadnezzar. The 
shame of his position he felt, and at the first 
opportunity he revolted, but in the disorders 
which followed he is supposed to have per¬ 
ished as was predicted. Which eventually 
triumphed, the dead king or the living 
prophet ? All that the latter prophesied came 
to pass, and having now lived through three 
reigns he was ready for a fourth, the same 
“ iron pillar.” 


The Heroic Jeremiah 


69 

A son succeeded the father on the throne, 
but was Jehoiachin long to wear the crown? 
With a courage like “ brazen walls ” Jeremiah 
delivered his message on this point, as he said, 
Though this son “were the signet upon my 
right hand, yet would I pluck thee thence,” 
and deliver thee “into the hand of Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar king of Babylon.” We can imagine 
the prophet holding up his own signet flash¬ 
ing on his hand to make more impressive the 
illustration. Note this signet which is to ap¬ 
pear again. Jehoiachin was to be torn like a 
very signet from the hand of an offended God 
to be made one of the jewels of the Babylo¬ 
nian monarch, and as a matter of fact he had 
reigned only a trifle over three months when 
Nebuchadnezzar came and made an easy con¬ 
quest of Judah, and bore him and the queen 
mother and Ezekiel and some of the choicest 
spirits of the land away into a captivity from 
which the king never returned, though he 
lived in his exile for years. For thirty-seven 
years he lay in prison, and then for the rest 
of his life he was permitted to sit at the con¬ 
queror’s table. Jeremiah deplored the loss of 
so many excellent citizens, and all through 
needless rebellion against what he had coun¬ 
seled. He compared the exiles to a basket of 
good figs, while those who remained were like 


7 ° 


The Trend of the Centuries 


a basket of bad figs in comparison, and he 
sent a tender message to the captives, telling 
them to accept the situation which had been 
providentially ordered. He assured them that 
the captivity was to continue seventy years, 
and therefore they should “ plant gardens, and 
eat the fruit of them,” till the time of the de¬ 
liverance came. 

One more king was to reign in Judah, and 
that was Zedekiah, the third son of Josiah 
who had been enthroned. He was a mere 
vassal of the Babylonian monarch. In due 
time he broke his solemn oath of allegiance. 
At once Jeremiah appeared on the streets 
with a wooden collar on his neck to symbolize 
the certain bondage that would follow this 
act of revolt. A prophet with a different mes¬ 
sage followed him up with the cheerful and 
confident declaration that in two years the 
captivity would end, and, waxing bold, this 
smooth-speaking prophet snatched the yoke 
from Jeremiah’s neck, snapped it asunder, and 
said that even so should the yoke of Babylon 
be speedily broken. So far from this being 
true, the captivity continued, but the false 
prophet did not, for to him our hero said, 
“ This year thou shalt die,” and in two months 
he was a corpse. 

Meanwhile, Hebuchadnezzar’s armies came 


The Heroic Jeremiah 71 

rolling onto put down the rebellious Zedekiah. 
They laid siege to Jerusalem, and the matter 
looked serious enough to make the Jews 
emancipate fellow Hebrews who were declared 
by the intrepid Jeremiah to be held in unlaw¬ 
ful slavery. Just then Pharaoh Hophra ad¬ 
vanced to Judah’s assistance, when the Baby¬ 
lonian forces withdrew to meet the new emer¬ 
gency. How that the danger seemed passed, 
the citizens of Jerusalem, against the earnest 
remonstrance of Jeremiah, reenslaved the 
freedmen, and the prophet seemed to feel that 
the case was hopeless. He insisted that the 
Babylonians would return, and they did as 
soon as they defeated the Egyptian army. 
But before the reinvestment of the city by the 
besiegers, the prophet was passing out of a 
gate to go to his native Anathoth on some 
business, when he was arrested and charged 
with deserting to the Chaldeans, an accusation 
that had some color of truth in that he had 
steadily advised the king and all to save them¬ 
selves from destruction by a timely submis¬ 
sion. He, however, was no cowardly deserter, 
and when he heard the charge he answered 
indignantly, “ It is false.” But that denial did 
not prevent him from being beaten and thrust 
into an underground dungeon in connection 
with the home of one of the princes, and in 


72 The Trend of the Centuries 

that noisome place he was kept for “many 
days,” till the king in his increasing extremity 
sent for him to get the latest word from the 
Lord. 

Think you that the “ iron pillar ” will now 
become supple, that the prophet will modify 
his message in the hope of securing his lib¬ 
erty? He has only to soften matters some¬ 
what, to prophesy smooth things, and he shall 
be freed from his rocky dungeon with its sub¬ 
terranean cells. What then will be his answer 
to the royal questioner, “Is there any word 
from the Lord?” The immediate reply is, 
“ There is,” while he adds, “ Thou shalt be de¬ 
livered into the hand of the king of Babylon.” 
In this prediction repeatedly made he was no 
sycophant currying favor with powers which 
he thought were to be, for he prophesied 
boldly that Babylon itself should in time be¬ 
come “ heaps.” He was honest, therefore, in 
his forecast of Babylon’s conquest. 

He pleaded for his life, which he said was 
in peril in the miserable place where he was 
confined. The king seemed to be touched by 
his resolute spirit, which longed for a greater 
freedom than was found in a stony cell be¬ 
neath the earth, and he had him removed to 
the court of the guard adjoining the palace. 
There the prophet as often as he could coun- 


The Heroic Jeremiah 


73 


seled submission, till the princes said, “He 
weakeneth the hands of the men of war,” and 
insisted upon a closer confinement, and there¬ 
upon they lowered him into an unused well or 
cistern from which the water had been taken, 
but whose bottom was thick with mire into 
which the prisoner sank. There he would 
have died, had not the king’s black slave, an 
Ethiopian, in pity secured from his royal mas¬ 
ter a countermanding order to release Jere¬ 
miah, who accordingly had ropes let down to 
him, and cloths to ease the cutting cords, 
while with a right good will he was drawn up 
and placed again in the easy confinement of 
the court of the guard near the king. 

The siege meanwhile was pressed, and a rel¬ 
ative came to him from Anathoth, desiring to 
sell to him some ancestral property in the vil¬ 
lage. Would the prophet be a buyer, when he 
had constantly prophesied the destruction of 
the city and the desolation of the land, while 
at that very time the besiegers with immense 
battering-rams were thundering against the 
walls, and when all over Anathoth doubtless 
were tramping the Babylonian soldiers? Was 
.the cousin insane to ask Jeremiah to make a pur¬ 
chase under such circumstances? We recall 
the familiar story of the noble Roman who 
bought at its full price the very land on which 


74 The Trend of the Centuries 

Hannibal’s army lay encamped before Rome, 
in order to show his confidence in the ultimate 
liberty and continued prosperity of the Eter¬ 
nal City. Would Jeremiah buy the field at 
Anathoth ? With faith in the future, however 
dark the present, he did make the purchase. 
He weighed out the money, paid it over, had 
the deed signed by witnesses, and he “ sealed ” 
the same. Did not we say that his signet 
would be seen again ? He pressed the “ seal,” 
perhaps inscribed with his own name, upon the 
wax, and the bargain was completed, while he 
said, “ Houses and fields and vineyards shall 
yet again be bought in this land.” Notice 
carefully again that signet upon Jeremiah’s 
hand, for it may appear once more. 

As to the dreadfulness of the siege that 
continued to be prosecuted we have ample 
evidence in Jeremiah’s Lamentations, subse¬ 
quently written, which tell us of delicate and 
refined women searching the dunghills for 
some morsel to eat, of the children crying in 
the streets for bread and receiving none, and 
of parents finally eating their own offspring 
in the rigors and horrors of the famine. At 
length, after eighteen months a breach was 
made on a July night, and the city was cap¬ 
tured, 588 B. c. King Zedekiah and family 
and retinue with muffled faces stole away in 


The Heroic Jeremiah 


75 

the darkness from the opposite side of the city, 
past the king’s garden, where none stopped to 
pluck any flowers. But the royal fugitives 
were overtaken near Jericho, and the fallen 
monarch and other captives, including Jere¬ 
miah, were hurried away north in manacles 
toward a point where Nebuchadnezzar was also 
conducting the siege of Tyre. The prophet 
was liberated, but how was it with the king ? 

Jeremiah had predicted that he should see 
his conqueror face to face, and now it had 
come to pass—“ Thine eyes shall behold the 
eyes of the king of Babylon.” That is all 
plain, but not so clear and not so easy of ful¬ 
filment was Ezekiel’s companion prophecy, 
which said, “ I will bring him to Babylon to 
the land of the Chaldeans; yet shall he not 
see it, though he shall die there.” How was 
Zedekiah to see the king of Babylon without 
also seeing his land ? Before he was carried 
to the conqueror’s capital he had his eyes 
speared into perpetual blindness, though not 
till he had looked upon the face of Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar. The refinement of the cruelty ap¬ 
peared in the fact that Zedekiah’s young sons 
(he himself being only thirty-two years old) 
were executed in his sight, and his last vision 
was thus of the innocent princes mercilessly 
despatched by the executioner’s sword. Into 


76 The Trend of the Centuries 

a hopeless captivity, where he is said to have 
worked in a mill like a slave, went the blinded 
monarch, while Jerusalem and the holy temple 
were leveled to the ground; and all because 
Jeremiah’s counsels had not been followed. 

The tragedy now hastens to its close. Over 
a miserable remnant that was left a governor 
was appointed with capital at Mizpah in full 
view of the fallen city, and though Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar would have been glad to have honored 
our prophet in beautiful Babylon, Jeremiah, 
as Josephus says, “ gladly clung to the ruins 
of his country.” In a rocky grotto, and in 
“ that fixed attitude of grief,” immortalized 
by Michael Angelo, he is said to have poured 
out his dirges over the “ city solitary ” in what 
is known as our Biblical book of Lamentations. 

There followed a happy autumn, when those 
who were permitted to dwell in the land “ gath¬ 
ered wine and summer fruits very much,” and 
it really seemed as if prosperity and happiness 
were returning, when the governor was assas¬ 
sinated, and, while the murder was avenged, 
the Jews who reestablished law and order 
were afraid of being punished by the Baby¬ 
lonian monarch for having permitted his gov¬ 
ernment to be unsettled, and they started in 
their fright for Egypt. But before proceed¬ 
ing far they seem to have seen the inconsis- 


The Heroic Jeremiah 


77 


tency of going straight to the country from 
which their fathers had been led out, and they 
consulted Jeremiah as to the right course to 
be pursued, and promised to heed whatever 
oracle he might receive from the Lord. He 
took the matter under prayerful consideration 
for ten days, and then announced his decision, 
that they should remain in their own country. 
But he had the same rebellious hearts to deal 
with as ever, and they had the effrontery to 
tell him that he had received no such message 
from the Lord, and they hastened on to Egypt, 
and forced the prophet to go along. 

He kept thundering out his denunciations, 
and declaring that they should be followed 
even into Egypt by the king of Babylon. 
When they reached Tahpanhes he was divinely 
bidden to take “ great stones ” and to “ hide 
them in mortar in the brickwork, which is at 
the entry of Pharaoh’s house,” while he pre¬ 
dicted that the king of Babylon “ will set his 
throne upon these stones.” There actually 
followed a Babylonian conquest of Egypt. 
Jeremiah had frequent contests with the Jews 
in their Egyptian surroundings, till at last 
they are said to have stoned him to death at 
Tahpanhes. 

How for the sequel. In 1886, Dr. Petrie, 
the archaeologist, was excavating at this very 


78 The Trend of the Centuries 

place of Biblical fame. “ He soon discovered,” 
says Amelia B. Edwards, the distinguished 
Egyptologist, “that he had to do with the 
calcined ruins of a structure which was both a 
fort and a palace.” She adds that she accepts 
the evidence of “that burned and blackened 
pile ” as to the undoubted fulfilment of 
Jeremiah’s prophecy. And as to that “ brick¬ 
work” before the palace, called also in the 
margin “the pavement (or square),” did the 
excavations reveal anything of that sort? 
We will listen to the excavator’s own words 
as he uncovered the ruins in 1886: “ This 

‘brickwork, or pavement’ at the entry of 
Pharaoh’s house has always been a puzzle to 
translators; but as soon as we began to un¬ 
cover the plan of the palace, the exactness of 
the description was manifest; for here, outside 
the building adjoining the central tower, I 
found by repeated trenchings an area of con¬ 
tinuous brickwork resting on sand, and meas¬ 
uring about one hundred feet by sixty feet, 
facing the entrance to the buildings at the 
east corner. . . . The platform is there¬ 

fore, unmistakably, the brickwork, or pave¬ 
ment, which is ‘at the entry of Pharaoh’s 
house in Tahpanhes.’ ” As Miss Edwards 
says, “ Here, therefore, the ceremony de¬ 
scribed by Jeremiah must have been per- 


The Heroic Jeremiah 


79 


formed, and it was upon this spot that 
Nebuchadnezzar was to spread his royal pa¬ 
vilion.” Those Egyptian ruins with their 
strangely preserved brickwork or pavement 
are to-day a living witness to the truth of what 
our prophet said nearly six hundred years 
before Christ. 

There is one more thing not to be forgotten 
in this connection. Among recent Egyptian 
finds is a seal with Phoenician characters which, 
according to experts, manifestly antedate the 
Christian era by some half dozen centuries, 
and this seal has the inscription, “ To the 
Prosperity of Jeremiah,” and scholars 
think it not unlikely to have been that of the 
great Hebrew prophet, who compared a Jewish 
king to a signet upon the right hand, and who 
pressed his own signet upon the wax when he 
“ sealed ” the bargain of the purchase at Ana- 
thoth. With that signet he really sealed the 
whole country of Palestine for the returning 
Jews, who did come out of the captivity to 
occupy again the Holy Land, and with that 
signet he sealed the same territory foy the 
coming Messiah, who did in due time appear 
there. And so the prophet’s life though seem¬ 
ingly fruitless had in it the germ of Chris¬ 
tianity itself, which sprang from the restored 
Hebrews, for ‘‘salvation is of the Jews.” 


8 o The Trend of the Centuries 


Jeremiah died after the passing of the king¬ 
dom whose downfall he had predicted, but the 
work of divine providence went forward, 
snatching victory from defeat, until ulti¬ 
mately there was the completest triumph. Said 
Savonarola, the great Italian reformer and 
patriot, shortly before he was burned at the 
stake in Florence on the square upon which 
multitudes have since stood as upon con¬ 
secrated ground, “ If you ask me in general as 
to the issue of this struggle, I reply, Victory. 
If you ask me in a particular sense, I reply, 
Death. For the Master who wields the ham¬ 
mer, when he has used it, throws it away. 
So he did with Jeremiah , whom he caused to be 
stoned at the end of his ministry. But Borne 
will not put out this fire, and if this be put 
out, God will light another, and indeed it is 
already lighted everywhere, only they per¬ 
ceive it not.” We can see how eventually 
both their causes rose to success, and this 
should incite us in any great moral reform or 
religious movement to stand like “ an iron pillar 
and brazen walls,” in the confidence of glorious 
achievement in the future through Him whom 
we serve. 


THE UNRECOGNIZED GIRDING OF 
CYRUS THE GREAT AND THE RE¬ 
TURN FROM THE CAPTIVITY 


“Thus saith the Lord to his anointed, to Cyrus, whose 
right hand I have holden, to subdue nations before 
him. ... I will gird thee, though thou hast not known 
me.”— Isaiah 45 : 1 , 5 . 


IY 


THE UNRECOGNIZED GIRDING OF CYRUS 
THE GREAT AND THE RETURN FROM THE 
CAPTIVITY 

After the destruction of Jerusalem by the 
Babylonian conqueror, and after a captivity of 
seventy years (from the first deportation) in 
the land of exile, Cyrus comes to the front as 
the restorer of the chosen people to the Holy 
Land. In his own writings on clay he repre¬ 
sents himself as an idolater. But God causes 
the wrath of man to praise him, and he seems 
thus to have used Cyrus, whom Scripture cer¬ 
tainly makes to have been the human instru¬ 
ment for the accomplishing of the divine 
purpose, and who may have become, under his 
strangely providential leadings, a devout wor¬ 
shiper of Jehovah. Our sources of information 
relative to this king are principally Isaiah, 
Herodotus, Xenophon, and a cylinder of his 
own writing recently found. The inspired 
prophet, according to the traditional view, 
wrote about two hundred years before Cyrus, 
or, on the theory of a second Isaiah, long 
83 


84 The Trend of the Centuries 

enough before that monarch became really 
prominent to make the prophetic forecast a 
sagacious one born of insight from above. 
The two historians wrote from eighty to a 
hundred years after the royal personage con¬ 
cerning whom they treat had completed his 
brilliant career, while his own cuneiform in¬ 
scriptions, though contemporary with himself, 
have been deciphered only since 1880. Though 
Xenophon may have meant his Cyropoedia to 
be a historical romance, and though Herodotus 
may not have always given the exact facts, 
both these classic writers are believed to have 
narrated what was substantially true. They 
certainly relate what accords in a very re¬ 
markable manner with the predictions of 
Isaiah, who mentioned Cyrus by name, and 
who declared that this prince was unconsciously 
to have the divine guidance—“ I will gird thee, 
though thou hast not known me.” 

Now the one thing which Cyrus was to do 
in the providence of God was to restore the 
Jews to Jerusalem, after they had been thor¬ 
oughly cured of their idolatry by the captivity 
in Babylon. He was thus to prepare the way 
of the Lord. He was to make possible that 
condition of things out of which the Messiah 
was to spring. He was to be the means of 
establishing the Jewish state, which was to 


The Return from the Captivity 85 

produce the Saviour of the world. His life 
was to have a very particular reference to 
Christ and Christianity. It was that for which 
he was raised up. His life, as Horace Bush- 
nell has expressed it in the title of a famous 
sermon, was to be a “ plan of God.” He was 
unconsciously girded for his great work, for 
that culminating and most glorious act of his 
whole life, the restoration of the Jews in 
order to the coming of the Lord. 

He may have seen at last how he had been 
divinely led, and may have accepted the mis¬ 
sion to which he evidently had been provi¬ 
dentially appointed. Looking back over the 
past he may have seen how everything had 
been planned with reference to the final re¬ 
sult. He was Cyrus the Great, because he did 
play into the hands of God, unconsciously at 
first, though perhaps consciously at last. All 
great characters have been, as they themselves 
have felt, men of destiny, that is, persons who 
have been used by an overruling providence. 
They come to believe that there is nothing 
fortuitous, but that all has been in accordance 
with the ordering of a Supreme Being. The 
immortal Grant closed his article on the Siege 
of Vicksburg in the Century Magazine with 
these words: “ The campaign of Vicksburg 

was suggested and developed by circum- 


86 The Trend of the Centuries 


stances; and it now looks as though Provi¬ 
dence had directed its course, while the Army 
of Tennessee executed the decree.” Let us 
see how this truth finds confirmation in one 
of whom we learn in Biblical and classical and 
archeological story. 

First, as to the childhood of Cyrus. The 
divine girding of Moses in his infancy is 
familiar to all; his being hid in the flags of 
the Nile, his rescue by the Egyptian princess 
who went down to the river to bathe, and his 
committal to a nurse who proved to be his own 
mother,—all these circumstances are romantic 
enough, but not any more so than alleged 
events in the infancy of Cyrus. According to 
Herodotus the reigning monarch of Media had 
ominous dreams, one of which was that a vine 
proceeded from his daughter and overspread 
the whole land, and this was interpreted to 
mean the accession of her offspring to the su¬ 
preme power. She had been purposely mar¬ 
ried to the ruler of obscure Persia to guard 
against any such contingency, for it was be¬ 
lieved that no prince of that then insignificant 
country would ever aspire to the throne of 
proud Media. But the dream of the vine 
roused again the king’s fears, and he gave 
orders for the destruction of his daughter’s 
babe, sending an officer for the child. The 


The Return from the Captivity 87 

mother, supposing that a loving grandfather 
desired to see her little Cyrus, had him arrayed 
in the best attire of royalty. She put on him 
his most splendid robe, and fondly gave him 
over to the official who had called. 

He, receiving the precious charge, had not 
the heart to take the innocent young life, and 
yet a failure to do so could only result in his 
own death at the hands of the tyrant whose 
imperious will was not to be resisted. Cast¬ 
ing about for some relief from a personal com¬ 
mission of the crime, he sent into the moun¬ 
tains for a herdsman, to whom he gave over 
the little waif with the strictest command for 
its exposure in the forest till it died, when it 
should have decent burial and not be left for 
the wild beasts to devour. The peasant hur¬ 
ried to his humble home, where in his absence 
his wife had given birth to a child that had 
lived only a few hours. She was mourning 
the death of her little one, when her husband 
entered the hut with the royal babe in his 
beautiful dress. Learning the story she drew 
the young prince to her bosom as a very god¬ 
send, and pleaded for his life with tears. 

She had a woman’s ingenuity, as she pro¬ 
posed the substitution of the dead child for the 
living. The corpse was arrayed in the royal 
apparel, and the little prince in peasant’s garb. 


88 The Trend of the Centuries 


There followed the exposure in a dreary soli¬ 
tude, and after three days the death of the al¬ 
ready dead was duly announced, and an officer 
of the court was summoned to witness the fact, 
and he testified that he had seen the child 
prince lying cold and still in his own beautiful 
dress, in which he was laid to rest for that 
sleep which knows no waking. The mother 
was wild with grief when she learned the sup¬ 
posed tragic end of her babe, and she heaped 
reproaches upon her father the king, till even 
he regretted the crime. 

They were not aware that Cyrus was safe, 
having been girded by a strange providence. 
He was tenderly nurtured in the herdsman’s 
family. Was he always to live in that ob¬ 
scurity ? Hay, God had a work for him to do, 
and he must in some way be discovered. He 
was to be the emancipator of the Jewish cap¬ 
tives, and the introducer of a new era whose 
crowning glory should be the advent of the 
Messiah in Palestine still five centuries and 
more in the future. How unlikely it seemed 
with his childhood spent in that cottage home! 

Again, there was a providence which re¬ 
vealed his parentage. When about ten years 
old he was playing king and courtiers with 
some boys who had come out into the country 
from court circles. He was the king, and be- 


The Return from the Captivity 89 

cause one of those over whom he had been 
chosen to rule did not obey, he gave him a 
beating. The father, who was high in author¬ 
ity, complained to the king, into whose pres¬ 
ence the offending peasant’s son was ordered. 
He stood up and manfully defended himself. 
“ What I have done,” he said, undaunted, “ I 
am able to justify. I did punish the boy, and 
I had a right to do so. I was king, and he 
was my subject, and he would not obey me.” 
His lofty bearing led to some suspicion as to 
his origin and to a close questioning of the 
herdsman, who, being severely threatened, 
made known the whole story of the deception 
that had been practiced ten years before. The 
king was glad, and made an honest confession: 
“ I bitterly repented of having given orders to 
destroy him,” and he restored him, now a hand¬ 
some boy, to the parents in Persia, whose joy 
was unbounded because of the lost who had 
been found, because of the dead who had come 
to life. If there was a providence in the in¬ 
fancy of Moses, there certainly was in that of 
Cyrus. God had girded him in childhood, 
though he knew it not. 

In the second place, Cyrus had a training 
which was not without significance. So im¬ 
portant was this, that Xenophon calls his nar¬ 
rative of the Persian hero the Cyrojpwdia, 


go The Trend of the Centuries 

which means “ the education of Cyrus,”—as if 
the education or training might be regarded 
the key to his useful and successful life. He 
was designed to be a wise and just and benefi¬ 
cent ruler. Was it chance that he was fitted 
in his youth for governing in so exceptionally 
good a manner as to be counted the model 
prince of antiquity ? There was a providence 
in his having excellent instructors. 

A well-known incident will illustrate this 
point. It was customary to let boys pass upon 
certain cases, and one day Cyrus was sitting as 
judge, to be rewarded if he decided right, and 
to be punished if he rendered a wrong decision. 
The case submitted to him was this, which has 
not been forgotten after the lapse of twenty- 
five hundred years: A larger boy had taken 
away the unnecessarily big coat of a smaller, 
and given him his own, which was really a 
better fit. The small boy, however, com¬ 
plained, and Cyrus was directed to judge in 
the matter, and he decided that each boy 
should keep the coat that fitted him. Of course 
it was an unjust decision, and the young prince 
was punished for not reasoning more soundly, 
and he doubtless remembered the salutary les¬ 
son. There was something providential in this 
training which he received. The hand of God 
was girding him, though he knew it not, for 


The Return from the Captivity 91 

the exalted position which he was afterward 
to occupy on a throne. 

He was likewise providentially taught in his 
Persian home to shun the intoxicating cup. 
His sentiments came out on the occasion of a 
visit in early youth to his grandfather in Media. 
He took a special dislike for the cupbearer, 
whose duty it was to serve the wine to the 
king after first pouring some of it into his hand 
and tasting it himself, that his majesty might 
be assured it contained no poison. Cyrus 
asked to be cupbearer for once. He did every¬ 
thing to perfection, and received the applause 
of the courtiers present, who were much amused 
at his powers of mimicry, because, though but 
a child, he stepped so grandly, and looked so 
solemn, and handed the cup with such a flour¬ 
ish to his grandfather. The king expressed 
his satisfaction, but called attention to a single 
omission, the tasting of the wine first by the 
cupbearer. Cyrus gave his reason for not 
doing so—he was afraid it was poisoned. 
What could have led him to imagine any such 
thing ? He explained : “ It was poisoned the 
other day, when you made a feast for your 
friends on your birthday. I knew by the ef¬ 
fects. . . . The things that you do not 

allow us boys to do, you did yourselves, for 
you were very rude and noisy. . . . You 


92 The Trend of the Centuries 

could not even stand erect and steadily. . . . 

So I thought that the wine which produced 
these effects must have been poisoned.” The 
young prince acknowledged that for these 
views he was indebted to his home training in 
Persia. He did not know that God had girded 
him in this respect. He had a great mission 
to accomplish, and without habits of sobriety 
he would have failed. Had he died in a 
drunken revel as early in life as Alexander the 
Great afterward did, he would not have been 
the means of restoring the Jews to the Holy 
Land and of establishing the conditions neces¬ 
sary for the coming of Christ and for the birth 
of Christianity. 

But more important than all else in his edu¬ 
cation was his distinctively religious training. 
The Persians, among whom he was brought 
up, abhorred idolatry. “They have,” says 
Herodotus, “ no images of the god's, no 
temples, no altars, and consider the use of 
them a sign of folly.” That is, they were 
monotheists. Cyrus himself, by coming in 
contact with polytheists everywhere in ma- 
turer life, seems to have adopted their ideas, 
and to have recognized numerous deities, and 
yet because of his early monotheistic training 
he was prepared to sympathize with the cap¬ 
tive Hebrews who were believers in a single 


The Return from the Captivity 93 

Deity. And even though in manhood he had 
the polytheistic surroundings of Elam, his 
great-grandfather having reigned in mono¬ 
theistic Persia, and one branch of the family 
continuing there, he naturally would not be 
averse to the worship of one God on the part 
of any thus disposed, even if he himself did, as 
his clay cylinder tells us, bow down before 
gods many, including the divinities of Baby¬ 
lon when he captured that city. He was un¬ 
consciously prepared to be tolerant of the 
Jews, who in their rejection of idolatry were 
not unlike his Persian ancestors. At any rate, 
this enlightened prince had come into our 
modern spirit of religious freedom, and he was 
very popular on that account. Surely, with 
his advanced ideas along this line, God had 
girded him, though he knew it not. All his 
training had broadened his mind, until his 
general policy was to grant freedom of wor¬ 
ship to his subjects of whatever belief. Prov¬ 
ince after province was brought under his rule 
when he came to the throne, but he could say 
on his cylinder, “ All of their peoples I gath¬ 
ered together and restored to their own'dwell- 
ing-places.” That beneficent policy made 
natural the restoration of the Hebrews to their 
native land, but there would never have been 
this crowning act of a right royal reign, had 


94 The Trend of the Centuries 

thei:e not been an overruling providence in the 
training of mind and heart. By the return 
from the captivity which Cyrus allowed he 
unconsciously prepared the environment 
whence came the religion of Christendom. 
He was divinely girded and guided. 

Once more, God’s girding of Cyrus appears, 
not only in the preservation of his life in 
childhood, and in the training which he had in 
his youth, but also in the accomplishments of 
his manhood. 

The way he came to the throne was an in¬ 
tricate piece of providential working. The 
officer, to whom had been entrusted the cer¬ 
tain destruction of Cyrus in childhood, was 
punished for disobeying orders by being in¬ 
vited to a feast at which the flesh of his own 
son was served as a delicacy by the inhuman 
monarch. Though finally glad that the child 
had not been destroyed, the king felt called 
upon to punish disobedience all the same. 
The officer smothered his indignation and 
grief, and bided his time for revenge. Long 
years after, when still others had experienced 
the tyranny of the king, he chose his oppor¬ 
tunity. He secretly had a letter sent to Cyrus, 
who himself was elsewhere a ruler of people 
in a small way, that Media was ripe for a re¬ 
volt and only awaited the coming of him 


The Return from the Captivity 95 

whom Providence evidently designed to lead 
in the movement. “ It is plain, Cyrus,” said 
the secret communication, “ that you are a 
favorite of heaven.” Cyrus came at the head 
of his forces, and, strange to say, by an in¬ 
fatuation from the gods, according to the be¬ 
lief of Herodotus, the king’s army was put 
under the very officer who had been com¬ 
pelled to feast on his own son for not obeying 
orders in the matter of destroying the child 
prince. Of course this officer on meeting the 
troops who had come at his private solicitation 
led over to their side all the Medians he could ; 
the king was dethroned, and Cyrus became his 
successor, and founder of a kingdom which 
led up to the Medo-Persian empire. Yerily 
God does move in a mysterious way. 

He often grants successes yet by overruling 
the wickedness of others for our good. Most 
men can point to things which enemies de¬ 
signed to work to their disadvantage, but 
which really inured to their benefit. A kind 
providence makes affliction even turn to our 
profit. There is wheel within wheel, and the 
machinery is frequently too complicated for 
us to understand. We can see no providence 
in some wicked act, which nevertheless may 
eventually redound to our advantage. The 
very wickedness of the Median monarch was 


96 The Trend of the Centuries 

the means of seating Cyrus on his throne. 
But Cyrus knew not yet how he was girded by 
God. 

Another great success of his life was gained, 
it would seem, by an accident, but actually by 
a little circumstance which must be regarded 
a providence. He had shut King Croesus up 
in the city of Sardis, but how could a siege be 
made successful against one “ rich as Croesus ” ? 
This celebrated monarch had fabulous wealth, 
and his name is still a synonym for abounding 
riches. His resources were practically un¬ 
limited. He was strongly fortified, even by 
the natural rock at one point, which was sup¬ 
posed to be absolutely impregnable. Yet 
Cyrus was to succeed. He knew it not, and 
yet it had been predicted of him: “ I will 

give thee the treasures of darkness, and hid¬ 
den riches of secret places, that thou may- 
est know that I am the Lord.” The riches of 
Croesus were to be his, and how was this to be 
consummated ? How could the walls be scaled ? 

That was the question, till one day a soldier 
saw a sentinel leave his post and come climb¬ 
ing down the very rock which had been con¬ 
sidered impossible of ascent, in order to get 
his helmet which he had accidentally dropped. 
The soldier watched the guard, and saw him 
safely return up the precipitous rock, and he 


The Return from the Captivity 97 

made known his discovery. By the rocky 
path thus revealed the city was taken, and 
Croesus was made a prisoner and a subject. 
The sentinel accidentally dropped his helmet, 
and the soldier happened to see how it was 
recovered, but that “accidentally” and that 
“ happened ” were links in the chain of God’s 
unbroken line of providences whereby the di¬ 
vine purpose was to be accomplished. God 
was girding Cyrus, though he knew it not. 

“ There’s a divinity that shapes our ends,” 

and there are no accidents and chances. 

Scotland rightly reveres so insignificant a 
thing as the thistle, because at a crisis in the 
national history, when enemies were stealing 
upon the Scots unawares, one of the approach¬ 
ing foe, coming in contact with a sharp thistle, 
broke the silence that had been maintained, as 
he involuntarily uttered a note of pain, and 
the cry roused the garrison, and Scottish lib¬ 
erty and independence were saved. The relig¬ 
ious mind of a grateful people recognizes that 
there was a providence in that thistle, which 
accordingly has been wrought into the nation’s 
coat of arms. 

You doubtless can recall little circumstances, 
mere chances, w r hich have affected your des¬ 
tiny. You casually picked up a paper which 


98 The Trend of the Centuries 

mentioned a good opening for business, and 
you went and settled there. Your future was 
determined by a hasty glance at a newspaper, 
or by a remark which you overheard. That 
is the way the world talks, but God says that 
he girded you, though you knew it not, in the 
hope that some day you might be led to rec¬ 
ognize his hand and to live with reference to 
his kingdom. 

The culminating part of the career of Cyrus 
was his conquest of Babylon. He had as yet 
no idea of his great mission, which was to re¬ 
store the Jews to Palestine and to prepare the 
way for the coming of the Lord. All he 
thought of was how to get possession of the 
golden city, and he did capture that, though 
not by the stratagem which Herodotus men¬ 
tions of diverting the water of the Euphrates 
from its channel and utilizing the dry river¬ 
bed for the inflow of his soldiers. A successor 
of Cyrus may have gained entrance to the 
city by that historic and ingenious method, 
but he himself says that he by a decisive en¬ 
gagement some distance away settled the fate 
of Babylon, which he entered, says his clay 
document, “ without clash or battle.” 

Then came the supreme moment in his life; 
for after celebrating his victory by publicly 
worshiping the Babylonian divinities he came 


The Return from the Captivity 99 

in contact with the Hebrew captives, and 
learning of the longings of their hearts he re¬ 
stored them to their native land. He had the 
statesmanship to see that it was wise to re¬ 
move from the center of his realm any who 
might be disaffected and rebellious and a dis¬ 
turbing element poisoning other minds, and to 
convert them into friends by permitting them 
to build up their own institutions in loved 
Palestine, where also they would form a bul¬ 
wark for his empire against a great rival power 
on the Nile. This liberal policy is what, ac¬ 
cording to his cylinder record, he universally 
pursued, and if he was actuated simply by 
what might be termed political sagacity he 
was all the more an unconscious instrument in 
the hands of God. 

But there is reason to believe that at this 
stage of his career he came to an understand¬ 
ing of how he was being divinely used. 
Everywhere in Babylon he would see the 
Jewish exiles, who would be able to tell him 
that one of their prophets had foretold all he 
had done. If we may credit Josephus, he was 
induced to read Isaiah’s prophecies, which 
mentioned him “ by name ” as the chosen in¬ 
strument for Babylon’s overthrow. He may 
have continued to read Isaiah to see what his 
further duty was. If he did, and the Jewish 

L.ofC. 


loo The Trend of the Centuries 


historian says that he did, he found these ex¬ 
plicit words regarding himself: “ That saith 
of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall per¬ 
form all my pleasure: even saying of Jeru¬ 
salem, She shall be built; and to the temple, 
Thy foundation shall be laid.” With startling 
force must the words of inspiration have come 
home to him, so personal did they seem, as for 
instance these: “ He shall build my city, and 
he shall let my exiles go free.” If Cyrus had 
this clear revelation at the last, he must have 
recognized the hand by which from the be¬ 
ginning he had been unconsciously girded. 
The Lord, he said according to Ezra, “ hath 
charged me to build him an house in Jeru¬ 
salem.” He obeyed, too, the divine directions. 
He did restore the Jews to the Holy Land, as 
we learn directly from the sacred record and 
by implication from his own monumental docu¬ 
ment, and he did have Jerusalem and the tem¬ 
ple rebuilt, in preparation, as we can see, for 
the coming of the Saviour. 

He had been touched by the Hebrew la¬ 
ment so full of pathos : 

“ By the rivers of Babylon, 

There we sat down, yea, we wept, 

When we remembered Zion. 

Upon the willows in the midst thereof 
We hanged up our harps.” 


The Return from the Captivity 101 

That is what the psalmist said, and what do 
we read on the cylinder of Cyrus as to his at¬ 
titude regarding such poor captives ? His 
own language inscribed on the recovered 
monument of his own writing is: “ Their 

sighing I quieted, I soothed their sorrow.” 
The captivity therefore was ended, the exiles 
by the thousand returned from Babylon to 
Jerusalem, and Christianity was the ultimate 
outcome. 

It only remains to notice briefly the closing 
of the eventful life which has been under con¬ 
sideration. According to Herodotus Cyrus 
met with a tragic death in a war against an 
Amazonian queen of northern barbarians. In 
her rage at the death of her son in the con¬ 
flict, she had declared that she would give 
Cyrus his fill of blood, and she is said to have 
plunged his head, severed from the body, into 
a vessel of blood. 

It has been felt by some that he perhaps 
deserved this fate for having departed from 
the Lord in prosecuting a war where he seems 
to have been the aggressor. Still, we are not 
acquainted with all the circumstances, and he 
may have been justified in doing as he did. A 
tragic death is not necessarily inconsistent 
with piety. The best Christians may be 
mangled to death in a railroad disaster. That 


102 The Trend of the Centuries 


sweet singer, P. P. Bliss, of gospel hymn 
memory, thus came to his end, and the Lord 
who had girded him in life doubtless did in 
death, though he knew it not, being perhaps 
unconscious at the last. 

But of Cyrus, the model prince according 
to classical writers, and the Lord’s anointed 
according to the inspired prophet, and of 
“ blessed deeds and upright heart ” on monu¬ 
mental testimony, it is more pleasing to 
accept Xenophon’s account of the end. 
According to this author, he died at a good 
old age, talking cheerfully to his friends and 
relatives, who had gathered at his bedside, 
about immortality, in words which Cicero 
long afterward quoted for their beauty and 
truth. “ You cannot surely believe,” he said, 
“ that when I have ended this mortal life I 
shall cease to exist. Even in lifetime you 
have never seen my soul; you have only in¬ 
ferred its existence. And there are grounds 
for inferring the continuance of the soul after 
death.” If such was his language at the 
dying hour, (and he may have thus finally died 
even on the battlefield after receiving a mor¬ 
tal wound), he was consciously girded by God 
at the last, 

“ Like one who wraps the drapery of his couch 
About him, and lies down to pleasant dreams.’’ 





WORLD EMPIRES 


































































“The king answered unto Daniel, and said, Of a truth 
your God is the God of gods, and the Lord of kings, and a 
revealer of secrets, seeing thou hast been able to reveal this 
secret.”— Daniel 2: 47. 





y 


WORLD EMPIRES 

The more the prophecies are studied, the 
more must one be impressed with the truth of 
the Bible and of Christianity. If only a sin¬ 
gle event came to pass as foretold, it might be 
called a coincidence, but the predictions which 
have been fulfilled are almost innumerable. A 
knowledge of Egypt furnishes a remarkable 
example of how prophecy and history accord. 
In the different fates of separate cities like 
Babylon, Nineveh, Tyre and Jerusalem, can 
be read what God has plainly declared before¬ 
hand. We cannot dwell upon such themes 
without having our faith strengthened. It 
has a happy effect upon our minds to be 
shown actual events which have been clearly 
predicted. 

The disciples were constantly being most 
agreeably surprised on comparing what they 
saw with what had been written. They were 
pleased, when it first dawned upon them, that 
the triumphal entry of the Lord into the holy 
city as witnessed by themselves had been pre- 
io 5 


io6 The Trend of the Centuries 


viously pictured most accurately by Zechariah. 
They were repeatedly struck with the literal¬ 
ness of what some old prophet had said as ap¬ 
plied to some circumstance in the life of the 
Master. There is nothing like fulfilled proph¬ 
ecy to remove doubt. When the two dis¬ 
ciples took that sad walk out to Emmaus, hope 
was almost gone. “ We hoped that it was he 
which should redeem Israel,” they said de¬ 
spondently to the unrecognized Christ who 
had drawn near to revive their drooping 
spirits and to reestablish their faith. And 
how did he proceed ? It was as the prophe¬ 
cies “ concerning himself ” were unfolded, and 
were shown to be accomplished in what they 
had witnessed, that their hearts burned. A 
like effect is produced upon us, when once we 
see how predictions have become facts. 

Our attention now is to be directed to just 
one prophecy and its fulfilment. Nebuchad¬ 
nezzar saw in vision a colossal image, with 
head of gold, with breast' and arms of silver, 
with stomach and thighs of brass, and with 
legs of iron terminating in feet which had an 
admixture of clay, while a stone cut out with¬ 
out hands smote the image upon the feet, and 
became a great mountain filling the earth. 
This was a representation of “what should 
come to pass hereafter.” The same succession 


World Empires 107 

of future events was pictured to Daniel by the 
rising of four beasts out of a tempestuous sea: 
a lion with eagle’s wings, a bear raised up on 
one side and with three ribs in his mouth, a 
leopard with four wings and four heads, and a 
nameless animal “ terrible and powerful,” with 
iron teeth and ten horns, while a little horn of 
great strength and pretensions sprang up, 
crushing three of the ten and lording it over 
the rest, only to be destroyed itself by the Son 
of man, by the Ancient of days, who succeeded 
with a universal and everlasting dominion. 

Daniel interpreted both these visions, or 
rather he learned their meaning after special 
prayer from God. With the divine illumina¬ 
tion granted him he foretold great world em¬ 
pires which were to follow one another. The 
king was deeply impressed by what the 
prophet said, and was moved to say, “ Of a 
truth your God is the God of gods, and the 
Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing 
thou hast been able to reveal this secret.” 
Under all the circumstances the intrinsic prob¬ 
ability of the forecast, of the interpretation, 
forced conviction home upon the mind of the 
monarch. He seems to have had a glimpse of 
the truth afterward enunciated by Paul in 
Athens, that with regard to all nations God 
has “ determined their appointed seasons, and 


io8 The Trend of the Centuries 


the bounds of their habitation.” We must be 
still more profoundly impressed, when what 
was to Nebuchadnezzar a probable future is to 
us a certain past. 

Though scholars are not agreed as to the 
empires that were foretold, let us look at the 
most common interpretation of the two visions 
contained in the second and seventh chapters 
of the prophecy of Daniel, the view that has 
been advocated by such ancient commentators 
as Jerome and Theodoret and by such modern 
interpreters as Hengstenberg and Pusey and 
Keil. Even if what has been the general out¬ 
lining of what was predicted is not wholly 
correct, there will at least be seen what the 
actual unfolding of history was in the succes¬ 
sive world empires whose culmination was 
what is increasingly proving to be the one uni¬ 
versal kingdom of the earth. The agreement 
with Daniel’s symbolism may also seem to be 
so exact as to make more than one of us adopt 
the language of the Rev. William M. Taylor, 
D. D., who long ministered with such distinc¬ 
tion to the Broadway Tabernacle of New 
York. He said : “I have never had so deeply 
impressed upon me the truth of the divine 
origin of Holy Scripture as when I was study¬ 
ing these chapters.” This was only reechoing 
the sentiment of the Oriental monarch, “ Of a 


World Empires 109 

truth your God is the God of gods, and the 
Lord of kings, and a revealer of secrets, seeing 
thou hast been able to reveal this secret.” Let 
us see what the revelation in pictorial detail 
was, and what its remarkable verification has 
been. 

First, there was the head of gold on the im¬ 
age, corresponding to the beast like a lion with 
eagle’s wings from the mystic sea. The most 
resplendent of the precious metals, and the 
king of beasts and birds, well represented the 
Babylonian empire at the height of its pros¬ 
perity six centuries before the Christian era. 
Its magnificent capital was called by another 
prophet “the golden city.” Nebuchadnezzar 
had marched his victorious armies from the 
Euphrates clear to the Mediterranean, and he 
could congratulate himself on a dominion 
which included pretty much all of the civilized 
world. To this day unearthed bricks almost 
without number in recent excavations testify 
to the splendor of his reign. They especially 
witness to his greatness as a builder of palaces 
and temples. Had he desired to sink into ob¬ 
scurity, he could not have done so in view of 
what the pickaxe has brought forth. He 
might have said with Macbeth: 

“ Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear 
The very stones prate of my whereabout.” 


lio The Trend of the Centuries 


But the inscribed bricks have done exactly 
that, the stones have cried out, and their wit¬ 
ness is that his kingdom was indeed, as Isaiah 
has said, “ the lady of kingdoms,” and “ the 
beauty of the Chaldeans’ pride.” 

Within his realm were the famous hanging 
gardens, one of the seven wonders of antiquity. 
That artificial mountain, erected for a home¬ 
sick queen who had come from a mountainous 
country, covered three and a half acres at its 
base, and rising with its verdure and flowers 
and trees above the lofty walls themselves, 
appeared to one approaching the city like a 
paradise suspended in mid air. This was only 
a sample of the magnificence of the capital 
which was called “ the golden city,” and which 
corresponded in the colossus of the vision to 
the head of gold. It required no particular 
insight in Daniel to interpret the first part of 
the two visions, for he was only relating what 
he saw, and what to us in this remote age is 
so evident from the inscriptions that were 
made with metal stylus in plastic clay which 
by being baked became imperishable. Lion 
and eagle in the animal kingdom, and gold in 
the mineral world, set forth the fact as to the 
preeminence of the Babylonian empire. 

We come next to the breast and two arms 
of silver, and to the bear upraised on one side 


Ill 


World Empires 

and grasping in his teeth three ribs. This 
typified, according to the prophet, the rise of 
a kingdom. Did such an empire appear after 
the Babylonian ? The Medo-Persian answers 
the description most accurately. The two 
nationalities constituting this great world- 
power are symbolized by the two arms of 
silver uniting in the breast of the image. The 
rising of the Persians above the once dominant 
Medes is shown in the bear’s lifting himself 
up on one side in the act of getting to his feet. 
It is also a simple fact of history (explain it 
how we may), that this consolidated power 
seized as if with teeth the three kingdoms of 
Lydia, Babylon and Egypt; these were the 
ribs held in the savage animal’s mouth. For 
two centuries flourished this political state, 
which has given us such illustrious names as 
those of Cyrus and Xerxes. Yerily the God 
of Daniel was a revealer of secrets, or the 
prophet could not have foretold this historic 
monarchy, could not have portrayed with a 
few graphic touches the chief features of the 
kingdom which was to succeed the Baby¬ 
lonian. 

After the Medo-Persian, we have the Ma- 
cedo-Grecian supremacy. This was repre¬ 
sented by thighs of brass in the image. 
Alexander the Great was the next to conquer 


112 The Trend of the Centuries 

the world, with his soldiers who wore brazen 
armor. Then the symbolical leopard had four 
wings, and the rapidity of the resistless con¬ 
queror’s marches is well known. Within 
twelve years, at the early age of thirty-two, 
he had made all his conquests. Did the 
animal again have four heads? So was Al¬ 
exander’s kingdom at his death divided be¬ 
tween his four principal generals. Was the 
brass made into two thighs ? So did his em¬ 
pire become reduced to two main kingdoms: 
Egypt under the Ptolemies, and Syria under 
the Seleucidae. The leopard is small, but as it 
attacks the largest animals of the forest, so the 
distinguished Macedonian was small of stature, 
and he had an army of only thirty thousand, 
but with that he met and overcame the re¬ 
nowned Darius with five hundred thousand at 
his command. 

Surely the prophet’s God must have been 
God of gods, or he could not have known 
such secrets so definitely centuries before the 
events transpired. It is not strange that 
Porphyry in the third century of our era, in 
his opposition to Christianity, claimed that 
Daniel must have written subsequently to these 
kingdoms, or he could never have stated the 
facts with such exactness. We are compelled 
to deny the prophetic character of Daniel’s 


World Empires 113 

writings, and 'to pronounce them history, or 
we must acknowledge the divine inspiration of 
the Scriptures and the truth of the religion 
there taught. It was to the latter conclusion 
that Nebuchadnezzar arrived, and we have far 
greater reason to come to this decision. He 
had not yet seen what was predicted with so 
much confidence. Before our eyes have passed 
the successive monarchies indicated in the 
prophecy. 

What was the fourth world empire? It 
was, as we know, the Roman, and there we 
have the legs of iron in the image, and per¬ 
haps the two legs in the Eastern and Western 
divisions of this political fabric; and we have 
the teeth of iron in the strange, composite 
animal. How mercilessly the legions of Rome 
did crush other nations, we are well aware. 
They were invincible, and there never was a 
stronger government than that which had its 
seat on the yellow Tiber. Still there were 
elements of weakness, indicated by the brittle 
clay in the feet. So many foreigners were 
taken into the body politic, that they were not 
assimilated; the iron and clay would not 
amalgamate. There was no cohesion, and 
there came dissolution; the Roman empire 
was broken into dishonored fragments; it was 
resolved into petty kingdoms; the animal 


114 The Trend of the Centuries 

grew ten different horns. The barbarians of 
the north coming in were the cause of this 
disintegration, and singularly enough various 
writers have counted just ten kingdoms as 
succeeding to the fourth great empire, while 
others believe that such will yet be the num¬ 
ber of nations into which Europe will even¬ 
tually settle, if it has not already been in that 
precise condition. 

There have been attempts to restore the old 
empire whose decline and fall Gibbon traced 
with such eloquence, but in vain. The Roman 
spirit has repeatedly sought the realization of 
universal dominion, but this centralizing tend¬ 
ency has been steadily resisted by the Ger¬ 
manic element, by the Teutonic love of per¬ 
sonal liberty. Charlemagne and Napoleon 
with Roman ideas have been thwarted in their 
purpose by German individualism. The cohe¬ 
sive iron has not been able to hold the con¬ 
stantly separating clay. 

Thus the prophet’s delineation of the fourth 
empire was startlingly correct, not only as to 
the fact of such a kingdom, but also as to the 
picture of its strength and weakness. How 
did Daniel know all this so many hundreds of 
years beforehand ? His must indeed have been 
the true God, the revealer of secrets, since he 
knew this secret. 


World Empires 115 

More wonderful than all was the prophetic 
declaration of a coming kingdom, which “ shall 
not be destroyed,” an everlasting dominion in¬ 
cluding all peoples, nations and languages. 
This was prefigured by the stone cut out with¬ 
out hands, appearing suddenly, making havoc 
of the existing civic fabric, and gradually 
growing to be a great mountain filling all the 
earth. This meant that the Messiah was to 
come during the ascendency of the Homans, 
and was slowly to build up a kingdom of his 
own. This is what Daniel said six hundred 
years before the event, and how literally it 
came to pass! History tells us that in the 
reign of Augustus Caesar, Christ was born, 
and for nineteen centuries we have seen the 
stone increasing into the great mountain. 

The cutting out of the stone without hands 
indicates the supernatural origin of Christian¬ 
ity. The kingdom of Christ was not to come 
in the ordinary course of events. A new and 
heavenly power was to be introduced into the 
world. There was to be divine intervention. 

Then this new force in society was to be 
comparatively feeble in its beginnings, a small 
stone at first. Compare the picture with the 
fact of the little band of twelve in the first 
century, and you see the peculiar propriety of 
the prophetic figure. The gradual growth of 


n6 The Trend of the Centuries 


the stone into a great mountain has been most 
wonderfully exemplified in the development 
of Christianity. The work which began so 
humbly in Jerusalem has widened by degrees, 
and it goes on widening with each age, and 
we may well believe that the stone which 
grinds to powder all opposition is finally to 
fill the whole earth. 

The kingdom of the truth is the only one 
which shall never be destroyed. The Baby¬ 
lonian empire soon passed away, the Medo- 
Persian lasted only two centuries, the Grecian 
or Macedonian three, and the Roman at its 
best not much longer, but the Christian dis¬ 
pensation has continued for nearly two mil¬ 
lenniums, and instead of being on the decline 
is stronger than ever. Each of the world em¬ 
pires to which the kingdom of God has been 
related, to the Babylonian by the Captivity, to 
the Medo-Persian by the return which Cyrus 
permitted, to the Macedonian by the provi¬ 
dential spread of the Greek language, and to 
the Roman by the privileges afforded from a 
widely extended government,—each of these 
world empires after fulfilling its predicted mis¬ 
sion has perished, while the kingdom of God 
is also verifying the word spoken of old by 
the Lord in a wider and wider extension. 

Now does it not seem amazing that Daniel 


World Empires 117 

should have so correctly portrayed the future, 
for such a sweep of centuries ? His prophecy 
was not general, but specific. There were to 
be four world empires, and there were, such, 
too, as he said they would be; and in the 
course of the fourth there was to be begun a 
movement altogether unique, which has cer¬ 
tainly had a most significant fulfilment in the 
history of the Christian religion. Well may 
our hearts burn, when we see Biblical predic¬ 
tions unfolding in historic facts, and the main 
reason why we sometimes become skeptical is 
because we do not “ search the Scriptures,” 
and inform ourselves upon the past. Let this 
knowledge be ours, and we will be confident 
of the complete triumph of the gospel at “ the 
ends of the ages.” 










































*> 


THE FULNESS OF TIME 


















s, 








« 

































» 

















‘ 1 When the fulness of the time came, God sent forth his 
Son.”— Gal. 4:4. 


VI 


THE FULNESS OF TIME 

A comprehensive survey of the first cen¬ 
tury of our era will show that the time was 
then ripe for the advent of the Saviour. We 
are to consider this period, fittingly termed 
the fulness of time. 

Certainly, so far as the outward was con¬ 
cerned, the time was very opportune in several 
respects. For one thing, the Roman empire 
stretched from the Atlantic on the west to the 
Euphrates on the east, and from the river 
Danube on the north to the African desert on 
the south. That means that the whole civi¬ 
lized world of that age was under one rule. 
It was as if America and all Europe were at 
present under the same government. More¬ 
over, this mighty empire was at peace through¬ 
out its length and breadth. The temple of 
Janus, to express it classically, was closed. 
Tranquility everywhere prevailed, and there 
was no political excitement to monopolize the 
attention. Men’s minds were not preoccupied, 
and a great moral and religious movement 
121 


122 The Trend of the Centuries 


could be started to advantage, while its ex¬ 
tension would be facilitated by the free com¬ 
munication existing between the most remote 
points. To be sure, there was no traveling by 
rail, but there were magnificent roads connect¬ 
ing the most distant cities; roads that were 
built of large, closely-fitting blocks, making a 
pavement of great durability; and to-day at 
Rome can be seen the ruins of the famous Ap- 
pian Way, constructed more than two thou¬ 
sand years ago. Besides these overland routes, 
there were ships plying between ports round 
the entire Mediterranean. Vessels bound for 
the eternal city brought precious metals from 
the mines of Spain, wild animals for the arena 
from Africa, corn from Egypt, wines from 
Greece, and silks and diamonds from the East. 
With this universal peace and freedom of com¬ 
munication, what better time could there have 
been for the appearance of a great Reformer! 

Still further, one language was dominant 
throughout this wide domain, and that the 
Grecian. Cicero said that his grandfather 
thought there was altogether too much aping 
of the Greeks, but they steadily pushed toward 
the front intellectually. They carried their 
ideas and especially their tongue everywhere. 
They taught school as far away as Spain, and 
by and by their language became the fashion- 


The Fulness of Time 


123 


able one; and while the people in Italy talked 
Latin, and in Palestine Aramaic,—while each 
section of the empire had its vernacular, Gfeek 
was the medium of communication between all. 
It was as if the whole civilized world now 
should have a common language. That was 
an immense advantage which Christianity had 
in the first century. So far as the linguistic 
situation was concerned, Christ came in the 
nick of time, as we would say, and in the ful¬ 
ness of time, as Paul says. 

Then the time seemed ripe for a Jewish 
movement particularly. The glory of the 
^chosen people had passed away, and they 
were scattered everywhere, every important 
city containing a synagogue. Thus were fur¬ 
nished points of contact, centers at which 
Christianity, which was of Judaic origin (for 
salvation is of the Jews), could take root. 
Uhlhorn, in his “ Conflict of Christianity with 
Heathenism,” well says of the advantage 
arising from the Jewish dispersion, that the 
gospel thus found “ channels everywhere cut, 
a network of canals extending over the whole 
Koman empire, and was able to diffuse itself 
rapidly in every direction.” An American 
would stand little chance of moving the 
Germans as a nation, or the French, or the 
Italians, but let groups of Americans be located 


124 The Trend of the Centuries 

in every considerable city of Germany, France 
and Italy, while all in those countries under¬ 
stood and could speak the English tongue, and 
the prospect would be infinitely better. There 
would be places to rest the lever, and with such 
a single vantage-point Archimedes declared 
that he could move the world. Exactly this 
condition of things existed at the coming of 
the Messiah. There were Messianic centers, 
not a few but many, wherever there were 
little settlements of Jews, who, as we learn 
from both sacred and profane sources, were in 
an expectant mood. 

While these three leading nationalities of 
antiquity thus in a sense prepared the way of 
the Lord, being providentially used to that 
end, they themselves needed to be superseded. 
Upon each of them Christianity was an ad¬ 
vance; it was upon Judaism, out of which it 
grew, from which it sprang with germinant 
force. This is saying a good deal, when we 
remember that the Jews were the most re¬ 
ligious of all peoples. They were really 
nearest the kingdom. They were the ones 
chosen by God as the channel through which 
redemption should flow out to all mankind. 
Salvation was of the Jews. And yet they did 
not at all come up to their privileges. Their 
religious life had lost its vitality, and formality 


The Fulness of Time 125 

prevailed. There had been no prophets for 
over four hundred years. Priests had taken 
their place, and religion had become largely 
ritualistic, a matter of ceremonies. The true 
God was known, but he was not worshiped in 
spirit and in truth. 

It seems to be a tendency of human nature 
to drift away from earnestness of life to mere 
forms, to undergo a kind of spiritual petrifac¬ 
tion. The Christian Church itself has repeat¬ 
edly run that course. From apostolic simplicity 
there was the departure which developed into 
the hierarchical system of medieval times. 
Then came the Reformation, which was a 
bursting away from this shell, and for a while 
there was great activity, genuine piety. Then 
Protestantism crystallized and became dead. 
The Church of England, for instance, became 
an ecclesiastical machine, which had to be 
broken by the Pilgrim and Puritan movement, 
and again by Wesleyanism all ablaze with zeal 
for souls. A pure Christianity has never been 
entirely lost. Like leaven it has kept working 
out from its hidden state. It has been the 
great purging and leavening principle of his¬ 
tory. What the Reformation was to the 
Church of the Middle Ages, what Puritanism 
and Methodism were to the Anglican Church, 
the gospel was in a preeminent degree to 


126 The Trend of the Centuries 

Judaism. It was a mighty new force in 
religion, a fresh outburst of spiritual life. It 
broke away from a narrow legalism shut up 
within itself, to preach glad tidings to a lost 
world. It began to seek and to save. It was 
the impartation of a quickened impulse and 
purpose to humanity. 

Christianity was likewise an advance upon 
what Greece could furnish, though she did 
contribute a universal language for the con¬ 
veyance of the truth. The Greeks were not 
an inferior race by any means. They had their 
excellences as well as defects. They knew 
how to extract enjoyment from this life. 
They lived in a country and climate which 
were very favorable in this respect. It was a 
land of sunshine and flowers and birds. Its 
shores were washed by the sea, whose wavelets 
went laughing up many a beach. It abounded 
in mountains and forests and streams. Under 
such circumstances the Grecians were of course 
great lovers of nature. They saw her in all 
her brightness and attractiveness, and in earth’s 
beauties they found most of their felicity. 

They had no pleasant anticipations of the 
future. They had no hope reaching like an 
anchor within the veil. They looked upon the 
hereafter as the abode of grim specters wan¬ 
dering here and there in the eternal shades. 


The Fulness of Time 127 

They did not grow eloquent over exchanging 
earth for heaven. They did not say, as did 
Paul, “to die is gain.” On the contrary, 
Achilles is represented by Homer as saying 
that he would rather be the veriest slave here 
than to be a king in the other world: 

“ I would be 

A laborer on earth, and serve for hire 
Some man of mean estate, who makes scant cheer, 
Rather than reign o’er all who have-gone down 
To death.” 

The Greeks, however, did not worry a great 
deal about what was to come. They lived for 
the present. They believed in making life a 
holiday. Hot that their conceptions were 
coarse, for they were noted for their refine¬ 
ment. They were so refined that they wor¬ 
shiped only the beautiful. They saw deity in 
playing fountains and in all natural objects. 
They peopled the waters with lovely nymphs. 
They called the rainbow a goddess. They 
considered everything charming as divine. 
They were advocates of culture, of accom¬ 
plishments, and therein they have never been 
surpassed. Their very groves were resorts of 
the literary, and literature flourished in the 
classic shades. They loved the theater, and 
produced such dramatists as ^Eschylus, Sopho¬ 
cles and Euripides. In art they are still the 


128 The Trend of the Centuries 


world’s teachers. They spared no pains, no 
expense, to produce the best that could come 
from the human brain, and if Sir Joshua 
Reynolds mixed his paints with brains, so did 
they. Their great sculptor, Phidias, is said to 
have been directed to use the most costly ma¬ 
terials he could obtain for his statue of 
Athena, upon which the gold alone has been 
estimated at fifty thousand dollars. 

This work was to have its resting-place in 
Athens, where taste was developed to the ut¬ 
most, and where it would be commented upon 
by every one, for the Athenians, according to 
both Luke and Demosthenes, discussed every 
“new thing.” This must have meant more 
than idle gossip with the cultivated Athenians, 
whose city abounded in statuary to such an ex¬ 
tent as to have attracted the attention of even 
a Paul, who referred to the statue to the un¬ 
known god; a city also whose atmosphere was 
such that the apostle could not preach there 
without quoting Greek poetry. As another 
has said: “ Probably every one of the free in¬ 

habitants of Athens was himself, if not an 
actual artist, an intelligent admirer, a skilled 
critic, an enthusiastic devotee, of art. He did 
not stand before a painting or a statue, gazing 
at it with the empty stare of most visitors of a 
modern gallery.” The “new thing” talked 


The Fulness of Time 129 

about in the Grecian capital would be the last 
poem written, the last piece of marble chiseled. 

Such were the ancient Greeks, who, says an 
apostle, sought after wisdom. And yet they 
never once thought that “ the fear of the Lord 
is the beginning of knowledge.” They were 
not acquainted with the first rudiments of the 
gospel, which does not despise the beautiful, to 
be sure, which indeed calls our attention to the 
lilies of the field, but which, after all, empha¬ 
sizes more the “ beauty of the Lord ” and the 
“ beauty of holiness.” They had no deep sense 
of sin, and the result was that with all their 
physical and intellectual graces they were 
morally corrupt, and their civilization did not 
endure because it lacked that great essential, 
exalted principle. 

Again, Christianity was needed in compari¬ 
son with anything that was given by the 
Komans of old. They originally were a mag¬ 
nificent race. They used to boast that for 
more than five hundred years no divorce was 
granted in their courts. There is a beautiful 
significance to the sacredness in which the 
Vestal virgins were held, those maidens of 
patrician rank, who, taking vows of chastity 
and consecration, kept the fire, which was the 
symbol of domestic integrity, ever burning in 
the temple. 


130 The Trend of the Centuries 

But the most characteristic thing about the 
Romans was their adaptability for governing. 
They had some grand ideas about citizenship. 
It was a Roman contemporary of Paul, the 
philosopher Seneca, who said, “ The world is 
my country.” It was a Roman theater which 
rang with applause, when the now familiar line 
from Terence was first heard: “ I am a man ; 

nothing that affects man is indifferent to me.” 
This idea of universal brotherhood, and espe¬ 
cially of all being subject to law,—this idea of 
a cosmopolitan citizenship, and of government 
coextensive with the habitable globe, was more 
completely worked out by the Roman than by 
any other nationality. Yirgil was correct in 
saying : 

“Others, I know, more tenderly may beat the breathing 
brass, 

And better from the marble block bring living looks to 
pass; 

Others may better plead the cause, may compass heaven’s 
face, 

And mark it out, and tell the stars, their rising and their 
place: 

But thou, O Roman', look to it the folks of earth to sway ; 
For this shall be thine handicraft, peace on the world to 
lay.” 

Roman authority was felt everywhere. It 
rescued Paul from lawless mobs, and saved his 
life more than once. A Roman citizen’s appeal 


The Fulness of Time 131 

unto Caesar from any part of the wide realm 
was not in vain. The system of law was won¬ 
derful in its all-pervasiveness, and this is con¬ 
ceded to be the greatest legacy which Rome 
left to the world. It was her ambition to 
frame laws, to create the ideal government, 
and Roman jurisprudence has materially con¬ 
tributed to the making of our modern civiliza¬ 
tion. But there was one fatal defect. The 
binding force was to be power, just and impar¬ 
tial, perhaps, but imperial power, nevertheless, 
of the most absolute kind. Contrast this with 
Christianity, whose cohesive force was to be 
love. The gospel set to molding character, to 
gaining the heart, and that is why the king¬ 
dom of the truth outlasts Roman empire. Rome 
was the very incarnation of power, pure and 
simple, but the new kingdom had a different 
conception of power—the power of the gospel 
with its loving rather than iron sway. And 
it was in this respect that Napoleon once called 
attention to the superiority of Christ’s king¬ 
dom to the empires founded by Alexander, 
Caesar, Charlemagne and himself. With the 
successive failures of world empires resting on 
physical force, it was full time for the estab¬ 
lishment of a different sort of kingdom, which 
should ever proclaim, “Put up thy sword,” 
and “ Love one another.” 


132 The Trend of the Centuries 

Above all, Christianity was needed in the 
first century because of the reign of downright 
barbarism. The cultivated Greeks and Ro- 
mans called those barbarians whom we would 
term uncivilized; but they also were barbarians 
from the standpoint of the gospel. What was 
the inner state of society ? What was the con¬ 
dition of things ethically? There were the 
most shocking immoralities. 

Gluttony was fearfully prevalent. So much 
attention was paid to the appetite, that two 
hundred and fifty dollars were known to have 
been spent on a single fish. Cicero, in refer¬ 
ring to a visit which Julius Cassar made him at 
his country villa, ’mentions incidentally that 
the distinguished guest took an emetic after his 
dinner, in accordance with a custom of the age, 
that the enjoyment of food might be repeated. 
There was the greatest extravagance in con¬ 
nection with the olden feasting. The beauti¬ 
ful but corrupt Cleopatra, having wagered that 
a meal of hers would cost a fabulous sum 
named by her, is said to have drunk crushed 
pearls at her repast. 

The treatment that slaves received in those 
days was horrible. Greek masters used to hire 
out the females for impure purposes. A Ro¬ 
man, for the offense of one, could legally take 
the lives of all his domestics. “ The innocent,” 


The Fulness of Time 133 

said a Roman senator openly in the council 
chamber, 59 A. d., “ must perish with the guilty,” 
as a terrible warning. Juvenal, in one of his 
satires, gives this picture of even a woman, who 
might be supposed to be less cruel than man: 

u Go, crucify that slave. For what offense? 

Who the accuser ? Where the evidence ? 

For when the life of man is in debate, 

No time can be too long, no care too great; 

Hear all, weigh all with caution, I advise — 

Thou sniveler ! is a slave a man ? she cries. 

He’s innocent! be ’t so :—’tismy command, 

My will; let that, sir,,for a reason stand.” 

Think of the multitudes, probably two to one 
of the whole population, whose lives were at 
the absolute disposal of such imperious and 
heartless persons. 

Woman was little better than a slave. She 
knew all too little of the sanctity of marriage. 
She was divorced for the most trivial causes. 
The celebrated Cicero put away his wife, with 
whom he had lived thirty years, to marry a 
young woman of wealth. Seneca, contempo¬ 
rary with Paul, speaks of “ illustrious and no¬ 
ble ” ladies, who reckoned time by the number 
of their husbands; and so a woman would say 
that a certain event occurred, not in the year 
of Rome, nor in the year of our Lord, but in 
the year that such and such a person was her 


134 The Trend of the Centuries 

husband. Of course there was no true family 
relation under such a state of affairs. 

Infants were destroyed by'the wholesale 
both before and after birth. Plato and Aris¬ 
totle, the best and most enlightened men of 
their age, considered child exposure proper, 
and even advocated the inhuman custom. 
Cato said that it was the “ duty of a citizen to 
keep great wealth together, and therefore not 
to beget too many children.” It was declared 
before the Eoman Senate, that nearly every 
member of that august body had exposed to 
death one or more of his children, and the as¬ 
sertion was not disputed. 

Courtesans were respectable members of 
society, and Socrates himself, whom some com¬ 
pare favorably with Christ, gave one of them 
advice as how best to prosecute her busi¬ 
ness, to win and keep “ friends.” There was 
the most brazen immodesty, Yen us being per¬ 
sonated after her own especial but nameless 
manner in the waves of the sea before assem¬ 
bled spectators. In the temples themselves, 
under the sacred name of worship, were done 
things of which, as Paul said, “ it is a shame 
even to speak.” Eead the apostle’s terrible 
arraignment of heathen vices, Greek and Eo¬ 
man, in the first chapter of his Epistle to the 
Eomans, and then read the sickening details 


The Fulness of Time 


*35 

given in Suetonius and Tacitus and other 
classical writers, and you will see that Paul 
did not draw a picture one whit darker than 
the facts warranted. It was dark enough to 
make us grateful for the transformation which 
Christianity has wrought. 

Even the amusements of antiquity shock us 
of the present. Immense amphitheaters were 
built, holding fifty to two hundred and fifty 
thousand persons. The Coliseum would ac¬ 
commodate one hundred thousand. Into one 
of these vast structures, with gallery above 
gallery, crowds would pour to witness the 
gladiatorial shows. The brutal exhibition be¬ 
gan with blasts of music. Then a procession 
of gladiators filed in, and at a given signal 
wild beasts were let in upon them, and as limb 
was torn from limb there was deafening ap¬ 
plause from the cultivated spectators. Or the 
gladiators were set to slaughtering one an¬ 
other. One would be struck down. Was he 
dead ? Hot irons were applied, and if there 
was a quiver of life, he was dragged out and 
despatched with the sword. The carnage con¬ 
tinued. At intervals slaves ran in to spade 
up the ground, covered with blood, and to 
scatter about fresh sand. How the heart 
sinks on seeing in Rome that marvelous piece 
of sculpture, which has come down to us from 


136 The Trend of the Centuries 

those dreadful days, “ The Dying Gladiator,” 
representing him who, as the poet has said, 
was “ butchered to make a Roman holiday.” 

The emperor Augustus, in whose reign 
Christ was born, had ten thousand men killing 
one another for sport. In Trajan’s games 
eleven thousand animals and ten thousand 
gladiators fought. Claudius had nineteen 
thousand mariners engaged in a sea-fight for 
his amusement, and the empress sat by his side 
to enjoy with him and others the bloody and 
ghastly scene. These were not mock but real 
battles, accompanied, says Tacitus, with “a 
great effusion of blood,” and yet, says this 
same historian, to witness the spectacle, “the 
shores, the adjacent hills, and the tops of the 
mountains, were crowded with a countless 
multitude.” 

So low had humanity fallen that ladies at¬ 
tended these exhibitions, which, said the Latin 
poet Ovid, in the most nonchalant way, fur¬ 
nished rare opportunities for lovers. A young 
man and his fair one could whisper softly to 
each other between the scenes, he said, and 
then they would join in a wager as to which 
of the combatants would be butchered first, 
thus actually betting on the final result, as two 
human beings stood up to cut each other to 
pieces, or as considerable armies moved to each 


The Fulness of Time 


*37 

other’s destruction, not for patriotic ends, but 
to make a holiday. When it was customary 
for woman, even, to revel in such sights, the 
degradation must have been appalling. 

What was still worse, the very children 
were provided with this kind of entertainment. 
Part of the program must be suited to their 
tastes, and accordingly there would appear a 
man on the platform, which was so constructed 
that at a certain moment it dropped apart and 
let him fall into a den of wild beasts which 
devoured him on the spot. How the boys and 
girls must have cheered at such a spectacle! 
Especially must they have applauded, when a 
person came into the arena, as one sometimes 
did, in glittering apparel, in a perfectly dazzling 
uniform, which by some hidden mechanism 
would suddenly burst into flames, and the 
poor victim would leap and writhe in agony 
till death came to his relief. 

It surely was full time for Christ to come, 
and to introduce a different order of things. 
The whole creation was groaning for redemp¬ 
tion, for divine intervention, and the Redeemer 
came just then, in the fulness of time, and 
there began a marvelous improvement, as 
there was instituted the movement which 
abolished slavery, which elevated woman, 
which glorified childhood, and which human- 


138 The Trend of the Centuries 

ized manners and customs, till as contrasted 
with the first century this age is a heaven 
while that was a hell on earth. There has 
been a steady advance since the dawn of the 
dayspring from on high, since the Star of 
Bethlehem appeared in the midnight of the 
world’s history, and we can say with Lord 
Macaulay: “ Those who compare the age on 
which their lot has fallen with a golden age 
which exists only in their imagination may 
talk of degeneracy and decay: but no man 
who is correctly informed as to the past will 
be disposed to take a morose or desponding 
view of the present.” We do not realize the 
splendor of the times wherein we live, nor do 
we recognize, as we should, whence our bless¬ 
ings have come. The race would have gone 
out in darkness and death, had not the Sun of 
righteousness risen to be the light of the world 
and to impart new life. Christ appeared at 
the critical period and brought salvation. 
The birth of the Saviour was at the fulness of 
time. 


* 


. A SKEPTICAL AGE 























“And certain also of the Epicurean and Stoic philosophers 
encountered him.”— Acts 17: 18. 

“ Pilate saith unto him, What is truth? ”—John 18 : 38 . 


VII 


A SKEPTICAL AGE 

The first century was a skeptical age. The 
types of skepticism were not essentially differ¬ 
ent from those of to-day. Such as at present 
proudly call themselves agnostics had their 
prototypes at Athens. Huxley adopted the 
name a few years ago to indicate what he sup¬ 
posed was a new school of philosophy, consist¬ 
ing of those who, according to the Greek der¬ 
ivation of the word, do not know about the 
claims of the Christian religion. The Latin 
equivalent is ignoramus, one who is ignorant 
or does not know, and that is an appellation 
in which one does not rejoice. Now even the 
modern agnostics, or ignoramuses, were dup¬ 
licated in a school of philosophy discovered at 
Athens by the Apostle Paul. These were the 
Academicians, or followers of Plato, whose 
essential principle at that time was, that noth¬ 
ing was or could be known. Their sentiment 
was embodied in that famous inscription on an 
altar in the Grecian capital, “to an un¬ 
known god,” and Huxley coined his new 
141 


142 The Trend of the Centuries 

word from the Greek for “ unknown ” in this 
very inscription. For this ignorance there 
was preached on Mars’ Hill certitude. 

The Stoics also were encountered. They 
did not believe in a personal God. According 
to their theory, matter and mind were identi¬ 
cal, or rather different manifestations of the 
same indefinable substance. There was some¬ 
thing above, which down here below was re¬ 
solved into the material, but one was just as 
much God as the other. There was an endless 
cycle of things. Fate governed all, and the 
best thing for man to do was to fall in with 
what was eternally destined to occur and 
recur. It was as useless for an individual to 
resist the onward march of events as for a 
cogwheel to refuse to do its part in some vast 
machine. The universe was only a machine 
which kept turning, forever moving round, and 
so one had better continue revolving with it, 
if he would not be crushed. The soldier must 
either keep step or be trampled to death by 
the advancing columns. With these ideas, the 
Stoic did not propose to struggle against what 
could not be helped. The eternal order of 
things, rolling round and round, was resist¬ 
less. 

Said Marcus Aurelius, that excellent Roman 
emperor of the second century, “Whatever 


A Skeptical Age 


143 

happens and shall happen, has already been— 
it is merely the same show repeated.” One, 
therefore, might as well bow to the inevita¬ 
ble. Even though that above from which is 
evolved what is here below, though that might 
be a little more refined than this material 
world, though it might be called God, it was a 
God having no sympathy, no interest in this 
life. It simply went on with its grinding. 
Hence Pliny the elder, who was a boy of 
seven summers when Christ died, said : “ What 
God is—if in truth he be anything distinct 
from the world—it is beyond the compass of 
man’s understanding to know. But it is a 
foolish delusion ... to imagine that such 
an infinite spirit could concern himself with 
the petty affairs of men.” 

That was the feeling of the Stoics; every¬ 
thing went according to law, and they settled 
down to the conclusion of accepting the situa¬ 
tion. They schooled themselves to apathy. 
Man was to do the best he could under the 
circumstances. He could get no help outside 
of himself; he must stand on his manhood. 
He must play his part well, and let the rest 
go. He had nothing to do with others. He 
should try to fill his own place, and that was 
enough. He was to be independent. If he 
felt that he could not sustain himself, if the 


144 The Trend of the Centuries 

cosmos moved too fast for him, and crowded 
him, he could take himself out of the way, he 
could commit suicide. If the house smokes, 
said the laconic Epictetus of the first century, 
go out of it, that is, leave this earthly house. 
If you cannot stay in the world with credit to 
yourself, you can leave the world. Maintain 
your manhood at all hazards, if you have to 
kill yourself to do this. 

The Stoic had no patience with a complain¬ 
ing spirit. He would take things as they 
came. There was no deity to help men; all 
were subject to fate; what had to be would be. 
In this cool, philosophical way the Stoic forti¬ 
fied himself for whatever might happen. He 
considered those who prayed to the gods as 
superstitious. He did not object, if they found 
comfort in it; indeed, he was rather inclined 
to think that for the ignorant, who could not 
rise to a philosophical view of things, religion 
answered a good purpose. Strabo, for in¬ 
stance, who died about six years before Christ, 
probably voiced a prevalent sentiment when 
he said: “ The common people cannot be led 
to piety by the doctrines of philosophy; for 
this reason superstition also is necessary, which 
must call in the aid of myths and tales of 
wonder.” The Stoic had only contempt for 
this notion of there being really gods, who are 


H5 


A Skeptical Age 

interested in mankind. The only god in his 
creed was nature, force. It was a pantheistic 
theory. It had some fine maxims, bordering 
closely upon Christian precepts, but after all it 
was very defective. 

There is opposition yet of this kind to the 
gospel of Christ. There are what are termed 
advancedLthinkers, although they are only 
thinking the oldest of thoughts over again, 
and thdy look upon all religions as so many 
superstitions. They perhaps concede that the 
various faiths exercise a beneficial influence 
upon the general mind, but still there is no 
reality to these beliefs. People pray, and im¬ 
agine .they are answered. They talk about 
God noticing the very sparrow which falls to 
the ground, about his numbering the hairs of 
the head. That sort of thing, it is said, does 
well enough for sentiment, but the fact is, 
God (if there be one) has nothing whatever to 

do with the natural world; the universe is 

>■ ' 

under law forever fixed. «wi‘ c C > 

How our modern Stoics delight to discourse 
upon force operating from all eternity! If 
any of them are at all inclined to admit a 
supreme Being back of all, they say with the 
elder Pliny that it is folly to suppose “ such an 
infinite spirit could concern himself with the 
petty affairs of men.” Besides, they do not 


146 The Trend of the Centuries 

recognize any God (to use Pliny’s expression) 
“distinct from the world.” Natural force is 
all the deity there is. There is a good deal of 
this pantheistic sentiment abroad, and that, 
too, not only in India, where it holds sway 
over perhaps the greatest dialecticians of the 
world, but in a loose form it prevails every¬ 
where, maintaining that nature is all the God 
there is; and so the teaching is now what it 
was two thousand years ago, “ Live according 
to nature.” That means, it is useless to fight 
against the established order of things. What 
is fated, must be; prayer will be unavailing. 
The thing to do is to take advantage of nat¬ 
ural law, to build up exclusively from that 
standpoint, to ignore the supernatural, and to 
make the most of self. 

This principle, acted upon, develops char¬ 
acter hard and cold. It makes Stoics, men 
who may be sternlyjnoral, but who are also 
proud and haughty. They feel that what they 
are they made themselves; there was no deity 
coming in with assistance. This spirit is at 
the farthest remove from that of the Christian, 
who says with Paul that by the grace of God 
he is what he is. It makes all the difference 
between pride and humility, as to whether one 
is a Stoic^or Christian; and of the two theo¬ 
ries of the universe, the one that there is noth- 


H7 


A Skeptical Age 

ing but unintelligent force or fate, the other 
that there is a personal God who makes all 
things work together for good, the latter is 
certainly more comforting, and more in ac¬ 
cordance with reason. 

Christianity also encountered Epicureanism • 
at Athens. This was a scheme of philosophy 
projected by Epicurus who lived three cen¬ 
turies before Christ, but it was presented in its 
most attractive form in the century immedi¬ 
ately preceding the Christian era by Lu<3retius 
in one of the most wonderful poems of litera¬ 
ture. This Roman poet adopted the atomic 
theory of the universe. He argued that there 
was no creative agency, but that the world 
was formed by the union of elemental par¬ 
ticles which acted according to eternaHaws. 
He, however, as well as Epicurus, only bor¬ 
rowed from Democritus, who four hundred 
years before Christ had used this language: 

“ Everything is composed of atoms or infi¬ 
nitely small elements, each with a definite 
quality, form and movement, whose inevitable 
union and separation shape all different things 
and forms, laws and effects, and dissolve them 
again for new r combinations. The gods them¬ 
selves and the human mind originate from such 
atoms. There are no casualities ; everything 
is necessary and determined by the nature of 



148 The Trend of the Centuries 

the atoms, which have certain mutual affinities, 
attractions and repulsions.” 

Lucretius presents this theory in poetic form 
when he speaks of the “ primordial seeds ” 


. . . ever changing, ever changed and vext 

From earliest time, through ever-during space, 
From ceaseless repercussion every mode 
Of motion, magnitude and shape essayed ; 

At length the unwieldy mass the form assumed 
Of things created.” 


That is to say, everything which exists is due 
to the shifting of atoms. Let them combine 
in one way, and a plant is the result; in an¬ 
other way, and a man comes forth. Even the 
mind, according to Democritus, is due to 
atomic formations. There is no self-existent 
Deity who creates and directs. If there is any 
God, even he is the production of these atoms. 
Matter alone is eternal. When the material 
particles of man separated and decomposed, 
that was the end. There was no future. The 
atoms entered into “ new combinations.” 

Naturally, those who accepted such a ma¬ 
terialistic view of the cosmos took as their 
'motto, “Let us eat and drink, for to-morrow 
we die.” The Epicureans, therefore, lived for 
pleasure. With the more high-minded, this 
pleasure was of a refined sort, but with the 


A Skeptical Age 149 

masses it was sensual. That is always the 
tendency of materialism. It removes re¬ 
straints. If there is no God, if death ends 
conscious existence, many will give free license 
to passion, with the purpose of enjoying life 
while it lasts. 

The Epicurean school of philosophy has 
been reproduced in the scientific materialism 
of the present. The theory is, that the only 
difference between lifeless matter and living 
plants and animals is in the arrangement of 
the atoms. Put two gases, hydrogen and 
oxygen, together in certain proportions, and 
water is formed. So, whatever exists is the 
result of molecules rightly arranged. Here, 
for example, we have some material particles : 
arrange them in a certain way, and they make 
a plant; in another way, and they make an 
animal. The principle is carried even to men¬ 
tal phenomena. What causes thought ? It 
arises from the disposition of the brain atoms. 
You express a certain sentiment: that is only 
because the molecules in your head are aggre¬ 
gated in a given manner. Change the posi¬ 
tion of those molecules, and there will be a 
different sentiment. 

Huxley said: “The thoughts to which I 
am now giving utterance, and your thoughts 
regarding them, are the expression of molecu- 


150 The Trend of the Centuries 

lar changes.” Thus, if the molecules of the 
brain take one position, a man will pray; if 
the molecules shift round to another basis, he 
will swear; everything depends upon the 
molecular arrangement. A maiden blushes 
with modesty ; there has been a stir among 
the brain atoms. Or she becomes brazen and 
immodest: it is only because of a molecular 
change. One disposition of the brain parti¬ 
cles will produce poetry, another disposition of 
them will result in prose. A game of chance 
is continually being played in the brain, and 
hence you are not accountable for your 
thoughts, as a great exponent of Epicureanism 
has boldly maintained. There is in strictness 
no such thing as mind; this is only the pro¬ 
duction of matter. Everything is traced back 
to atoms. Life, intellect, spirit, all have a 
“ physical basis.” 

So says our materialistic science, or rather 
philosophy, for it is not knowledge so much as 
speculation. God is practically ruled out of 
the universe, and people are urged to eat and 
drink, to play and dress, and to have a com¬ 
fortable time in general. Of course, what 
would be enjoyment for one might not be for 
another, but the aim of all is pleasure of some 
sort, which is apt to be sensuous. 

Possibly, atoms have accidentally arranged 


A Skeptical Age 


151 

themselves so as to produce the existing order 
of things, but it seems more reasonable to 
believe that God, a personal Intelligence, is 
back of all and potentially in all, on an evolu¬ 
tionary scheme that may be entirely theistic. 
Moreover, the practical working of the Bibli¬ 
cal theory, though it be that of a divine evo¬ 
lution, is infinitely better than that of the 
purely atomic or materialistic theory; and that 
should be decisive as to which is superior. 
The one view makes men conscientious, the 
other makes them lax in their lives. In the 
one case you get Christians who are actuated 
by principle; in the other you get Epicureans 
whose impelling motive is pleasure. Chris¬ 
tianity won the day over Epicureanism. 

Not only were there these distinct schools 
of skepticism in the first century, but there 
was a general unbelief, voiced by Pilate, 
when he asked contemptuously, “What is 
truth ?” With growth of knowledge, no 
wonder there was an unsettling of belief in 
view of what the religions of antiquity were. 
Take, for instance, the gods and goddesses of 
Homer, who were only prodigious men and 
women. Mars, wounded at Troy, falls sprawl¬ 
ing over nearly two acres of ground, and a 
god’s cry of pain was like the roaring of ten 
thousand men. The most anthropological no- 


152 The Trend of the Centuries 

tion of the deities was entertained. They are 
represented as sitting on Olympus, convulsed 
with laughter, when one of their number from 
a lameness hobbles across the floor. We are 
familiar with Juno’s sulking, so true to human 
nature. That is, the gods and goddesses were 
only abnormally developed men and women, 
with the faults of humanity magnified; and 
hence it was but natural that Julius Caesar 
and the infamous Nero should be deified, as 
they actually were, being made objects of 
worship. It is not strange, therefore, that 
religion came to be held in contempt. 

That was the inevitable result from the ac¬ 
quisition of a cosmopolitan knowledge. 
People did not live and die in the place of 
their birth; they did not stay in the country of 
their nativity. With the facilities of travel 
afforded by the Eoman empire which was so 
widely extended they could and did go every¬ 
where. And what did they see ? Every na¬ 
tionality having its own worship. If they had 
always remained at home, they might have 
supposed there was only one religion, namely, 
that which they professed. Upon a larger 
acquaintance with the world, they found mul¬ 
titudinous religions, and the devotees of all 
seemed alike sincere. Such being the case, 
their faith would naturally be shaken that 


A Skeptical Age 153 

they alone were right. As they became bet¬ 
ter informed on each cultns, as they studied 
into the various systems, they would become 
unsettled, and ask bitterly, What is the truth, 
any way ? They would get skeptical about all 
religions. 

That exactly was what took place. Lucian, 
for instance, of the second century, was only 
reflecting a very common sentiment of the 
first, when he made one of his characters say 
that all is confusion. “ Some worship one, and 
some another. The Scythians sacrifice to a 
scimitar; . . . the Assyrians to a dove; 

the Persians to fire ; the Egyptians to water,” 
and he ran on with numerous specifications, 
closing with, “ How ridiculous ... is 
such a variety ! ” That was the prevalent 
feeling. 

The numberless gods were explained away. 
Some adopted the theory of Anaxagoras, that 
the so-called deities were only symbols of 
physical forces, and so they converted myth¬ 
ology, as Professor Fisher of Yale has said, 
“ into a scheme of natural philosophy,” while 
others resolved it into a system of “moral 
philosophy by identifying the deities with 
abstract ethical precepts.” There was, for 
example, no such god as Yulcan: he was only 
another name for the physical force called fire; 


154 The Trend of the Centuries 

there was no such goddess as Yenus: she 
denoted simply the moral (or rather immoral) 
affection of love. 

Others still accepted the view of Euhemerus, 
that the myths are historical persons and 
events, only exaggerated. Zeus was once a 
king of Crete, who in the lapse of time had 
been transformed by the popular estima¬ 
tion into a god; somewhat as we almost 
worship, it is sometimes said, Washington 
and Lincoln. Socrates alluded to this theory, 
when, as he and a friend were walking along 
the banks of a river, his companion re¬ 
marked that they must be somewhere near 
the point at which the god Boreas bore off 
the maiden Orythia for a wife. Socrates was 
asked if he believed the tale, and he said 
that some gave this explanation: a damsel 
probably was beguiling herself upon the 
river bank, “ when a northern gust carried 
her over the neighboring rocks; and this be¬ 
ing the manner of her death, she was said to 
have been carried away by Boreas,” whose 
name is only that for the north wind. Even 
the wolf, which was said to have suckled 
Komulus and Kemus, the reputed founders of 
Borne, was made by the skeptical to be a 
woman by the name of Lupa, the Latin word 
for wolf. Thus, in various ways the gods were 


A Skeptical Age 155 

being ruled out of existence, the supernatural 
was being eliminated. 

In the Tuscalan Disputations of Cicero, there 
is represented a very‘characteristic dialogue. 
Different myths are referred to, that of the 
three-headed Cerberus in the shades below 
(that watch-dog of the mythological hell), and 
still others are mentioned, and one person says 
to another, that he probably dreaded those 
things ; but the other replied that he was not 
so “ imbecile ” as that. The conversation con¬ 
tinues after this fashion: “ What! do you not 

believe them ? ” “ Not in the least.” “ I am 

sorry to hear that.” “ Why, I beg ? ” “ Be¬ 

cause I could have been very eloquent in 
speaking against them.” That is, he only 
regretted that his friend did not believe in the 
gods because it deprived him of the pleasant 
pastime of showing him that there were no 
such beings. 

Now what could have caused this skeptical 
tendency ? It was due to the wider knowledge 
which that generation had attained. As peo¬ 
ple traveled here and there through the then 
known world, they saw that each nation had 
its own myths. The different religions were 
evidently creations of different types of mind. 
What Xenophanes had said six hundred years 
before was true. He called attention to the 


156 The Trend of the Centuries 

fact that the Africans made the images of 
their gods black and with flat noses, like the 
people themselves, and in general that every 
nation copied its own physical characteristics. 
He remarked further, that if beasts were to 
make representations of deities, they would 
have them like themselves: the horse would 
have a god of an equine type, the ox of the 
bovine and the lion of the leonine. This was 
a sentiment which the first century could 
endorse. As people came in contact with the 
various religions, and saw how manifestly they 
were the inventions of the separate national¬ 
ities, faith in any religion was destroyed, 
skepticism sprang up, and Pilate’s question 
was general, “ What is truth ? ” The Romans 
thought they had it, the Greeks imagined they 
had it, the Egyptians fancied they had it, the 
Persians supposed they had it, till b} T and by 
the conclusion was that none of them had it; 
there was no such thing as truth. 

There is more or less of this feeling at 
present, and for a similar reason. This is an 
age of traveling. The world’s population is 
flowing round and round this earth, like the 
fabled ocean of old. Separate nationalities, 
like rivers, are more and more merging into 
that great ocean whose only name is humanity. 
We are thus learning that there are many re- 


A Skeptical Age 157 

ligions. We have our books on “The Ten 
Great Religions, : ” and “The Faiths of the 
World.” We see that the Hindus have their 
Brahma, the Chinese their Confucius, the 
Turks their Mahomet, and (shall we say it ?) 
the Christians their Christ. There is a cosmo¬ 
politan knowledge of things, and we see how 
almost innumerable are the religions of man¬ 
kind. 

Every African tribe, even, flatters itself 
that it alone has the truth. The inhabitants 
of the dark continent have as much disdain 
for us as we have for them. Stanley and his 
companions were considered great curiosities, 
and as they stood in the center of a black 
group of natives, it was doubted whether they 
were really human. Stanley says that the 
women, with lower jaws dropped, in a posture 
of reflection, wondered if there could be men 
“ 4 white all over 5 in this queer, queer world ! ” 
And the astonishment of the children, he says, 
“ seemed to find its natural expression in hop¬ 
ping on one leg, thrusting their right thumbs 
into their mouths to repress the rising scream,” 
amused Reyond all measure. That is a most 
suggestive scene. We think ourselves superior 
to them, and they imagine themselves our 
superiors. In other words, every tribe, every 
nation, has its own methods of living, its own 


158 The Trend of the Centuries 

principles of action, its own forms of worship. 
In these days, with the intercourse existing 
between all parts of the globe, we are famil¬ 
iarized with the idea of different religions, just 
as they were to a lesser extent In the first 
century, and it has a disturbing and unsettling 
effect. There are excellences in Brahminism, 
in Confucianism, in Mohammedanism, but 
where is the truth ? In the multiplicity of 
faiths, what shall we believe? “What is 
truth ? ” 

Pilate, however, had more reason for asking 
his question than we have. We can see as 
historical fact (and here is the great and 
unanswerable argument for Christianity as 
against all other religions) what to him was 
only prophecy, namely, that there is a kingdom 
not of this world, spiritual, running through 
all kingdoms, and, strangely, having subjects in 
all. There is a religion, not tribal, not na¬ 
tional, but international and universal. It is 
not “the light of Asia,” merely, but “the 
light of the world.” It does not spring from 
any particular type of mind, it is not meant 
for any one portion of the race. It is born of 
heaven, and has world-wide adaptation. It is 
suited to Mongolian and Caucasian alike. It 
knows no sectional lines. It is a kingdom 
within kingdoms, and its subjects are neither 


A Skeptical Age 


J 59 

Jew nor Gentile. They are simply Christians, 
conforming, as the author of the ancient 
epistle to Diognetus says, to the usages of the 
country where they may happen to live “ in 
respect to dress, food and other things per¬ 
taining to the outward life,” and yet showing 
a “ peculiarity of conduct wonderful and strik¬ 
ing to all. They obey the existing laws, and 
conquer the laws by their own living.” 

Here surely is the truth, something which 
can mold character everywhere according to 
one grand, noble ideal, and yet not alter the 
great divisions of the globe by obliterating 
race distinctions that are immaterial. The 
European can be a Christian and remain a 
European, the Asiatic can be a Christian and 
remain an Asiatic, the African can be a Chris¬ 
tian and remain an African, the American can 
be a Christian and remain an American; the 
Chinaman can continue to wear his cue, the 
Oriental his turban. The religion of the cross 
has nothing to say about the merely outward. 
It only asks what Socrates, according to the 
Phmdrus, once prayed for: “ Give me beauty 
in the inward soul.” With this aim, to make 
humanity one in spirit, the gospel is being ex¬ 
tended round the world. 

Ho other religion aspires to such a dominion. 
There are other religions which are more or 


160 The Trend of the Centuries 

less missionary in their efforts, which are to a 
certain extent aggressive, but they have no 
clear idea or settled purpose of circling the 
globe with their teaching and influence. 
Christianity, however, is working for precisely 
this, and has faith to believe that it will be 
successful in the end. The wonderful progress 
already made justifies this confident expecta¬ 
tion. The most skeptical cannot help ac¬ 
knowledging that no other religion has shown 
such adaptability to “ every kindred, every 
tribe, on this terrestrial ball.” 

Pilate in his day had seen no religion suit¬ 
able for our common humanity. The Greeks 
had their gods, the Romans had theirs. What 
wonder, then, that he asked in bitterness of 
heart, “ What is truth ? ” He could have 
sympathized with Diagoras, who more than 
four hundred years before had indicated his 
disgust by casting his image of the god Her¬ 
cules “ into the fire to cook a dish of lentils.” 
If only the Roman governor could have ap¬ 
preciated what Christ predicted, that there 
was to be a kingdom of the truth, not confined 
to national limits but suitable for the race; if 
he could have seen this kingdom, as we ac¬ 
tually do see it, literally compassing the 
world, he perhaps would not have spoken so 
contemptuously. He regarded the idea of a 


A Skeptical Age 161 

world-wide religion chimerical, just as did 
Celsus, the noted opponent of Christianity in 
the second century. “If,” said Celsus, “all 
to the uttermost ends of the earth ” could be 
brought under one religious system, it might 
be well; but, he added, “ any one who thinks 
this possible knows nothing.” 

In the light of history we can say that it is 
possible; for the gospel is making converts 
everywhere, and it always has been doing this, 
and it is this which should cure us of any latent 
skepticism. We are living in an age of cosmo¬ 
politan knowledge, we are learning that there 
are many religions in the world, and as we 
stand face to face with the multiplicity of be¬ 
liefs, we are at first bewildered, and we cry 
out, “ What is truth ? ” But a more compre¬ 
hensive view of the situation removes uncer¬ 
tainty. We see that there is one religion, and 
that, Christianity, which is supplanting all 
others; which not only took an age that with 
all its culture and classical civilization was 
morally corrupt, and lifted it under favoring 
providential conditions toward purity and 
ethical wholesomeness, but which also took an 
age that was bewilderingly, and it might seem 
hopelessly, skeptical, and, meeting strongly the 
intellectual need, converted it to a gratifying 
extent by spiritual dynamics having the power 


162 The Trend of the Centuries 


of God into an age of faith, and which has in¬ 
creasingly been doing this ever since. Silently 
it is doing its work, undermining old supersti¬ 
tions everywhere, appealing to no one type of 
character, but to humanity at large. Quiet 
and yet tremendous influences are going out 
here and there to the ends of the earth, and 
all tending to one result, the conversion of the 
world. 

What is truth ? Looking at the great his¬ 
torical movements, seeing country after country 
falling into line with Christian civilization, 
feeling the earth quiver under the tramp of the 
army of the Lord, with victory in the air and 
all signs pointing to the glorious consumma¬ 
tion when the kingdoms of this world shall 
become his, we cannot doubt any longer. 


THE APPEAL UNTO C^ESAP: CHRIS¬ 
TIANITY VICTORIOUS 


“I appeal unto Caesar.”—A cts 25: 11. 


VIII 


THE APPEAL UNTO CAESAR: CHRISTIANITY 
VICTORIOUS 

One who has been in the unroofed palace 
of the Caesars on the Palatine Hill in Rome, 
and possibly in the very room where Paul 
stood before Nero, cannot be otherwise than 
stirred by the apostle’s historic “ appeal unto 
Caesar.” The crumbling walls, the vast ruins, 
are deeply impressive. They speak of a past 
civilization, the most splendid known to 
antiquity, having gone down before a new 
force, namely, that represented in chapel, 
church and cathedral. They testify that the 
magnificent empire of the Caesars has faded 
from the earth, and that in its place has risen 
the kingdom of the truth in the religion of 
Jesus Christ. One who on reading history 
has become confused as to the gospel being a 
divine reality, who has become befogged by 
the conflicts of the ages, need only to take his 
position amid those immense ruins overlook¬ 
ing the uncovered Roman Forum, and take a 
survey of the centuries with the mighty 
165 


166 The Trend of the Centuries 


changes that have occurred, to be reassured in 
belief and to be confirmed in faith. Christian 
Europe is a standing and unanswerable proof 
that the appeal unto Caesar steadily made its 
impression and ultimately prevailed. Let us 
consider for a little and in broad outline how 
Caesarism was overthrown, and how Chris¬ 
tianity was established upon the “ broken and 
dishonored fragments.’’ 

The infamous Nero was the Caesar who at 
the time of Paul’s appeal wore the imperial 
purple. There never was such a monster. 
Not to mention vices which cannot be properly 
described, he ordered the execution of a wife, 
the assassination of his mother, and by a brutal 
kick he killed a second wife. His was the 
first great persecution of the Christians. Ac¬ 
cording to contemporary charges his own hand, 
or at least his appointed instruments, applied 
the torch to Rome, and for six days and seven 
nights there raged that conflagration, which 
was mightier than the now historic Chicago 
fire, which swept over the seven hills, and left 
but little of what had been a superb city. 
What Augustus before him, according to that 
emperor’s own boast, had found brick and left 
marble, this to the extent of three-fourths of 
its area was converted by Nero’s fire into a 
desolate ruin. And yet the imperial incen- 


The Appeal Unto Caesar 167 

diary, as the flames leaped and roared, sat and 
talked, says Suetonius the Latin historian, of 
“the beautiful effects of the conflagration.” 
What was too true is commemorated by a 
familiar saying of ours, that Nero fiddled 
while Rome burned. 

It was to divert suspicion and indignation 
from himself as the cause of this great 
calamity, that he gave the Christians over to 
the popular fury. So we learn from Tacitus, 
who informs us that “ a great multitude ” thus 
perished. “ Some,” says this same Roman 
writer, “ were nailed on crosses; others sewn 
up in the skins of wild beasts, and exposed to 
the fury of dogs; others again, smeared over 
with combustible materials, were used as 
torches to illuminate the darkness of the 
night.” Says Juvenal, not improbably an eye¬ 
witness : 


“At the stake they shine, 

Who stand with throat transfixed and smoke and burn.” 

And Nero rode round in his chariot, enjoying 
the spectacle, his course illuminated with liv¬ 
ing fireworks. 

Such was the Caesar to whom Paul appealed, 
and though the apostle by a previous acquittal 
escaped this wholesale destruction of disciples, 
he was within four years arrested and re- 


168 The Trend of the Centuries 


manded to Rome, to appear again before the 
emperor’s tribunal. “ What a contrast,” Far¬ 
rar well exclaims, “does the juxtaposition of 
two such characters suggest—the one the vilest 
and most wicked, the other the best and noblest 
of mankind ! ” The end every one knows; sen¬ 
tence of death was pronounced upon the great 
apostle, who was conducted to the place of 
execution, possibly to the site of the present 
St. Paul’s Cathedral outside the city gates, and 
there, according to tradition, he was beheaded; 
not, however, till in prison, perhaps in the dark 
Mamertine that still exists,—till from some 
such dungeon he had given that triumphant 
dying testimony in the last letter he ever 
wrote, the second epistle to Timothy: “ The 
time of my departure is come. I have fought 
the good fight, I have finished the course, I 
have kept the faith: henceforth there is laid 
up for me the crown of righteousness.” 

Later in the same summer Nero died, but 
how different the close of his life! “ It is all 

over with me,” he cried in despair toward the 
last; “I am beyond all example,wretched.” 
His very slumbers were disturbed. He dreamed 
that he was covered with swarms of loathsome 
ants, that he was drifting in a rudderless ship, 
that he was being dragged by his murdered 
wife Octavia into a “ prodigiously dark place.” 


The Appeal Unto Csesar 169 

No wonder that he leaped from his bed in 
fright at midnight! It is not strange that he 
meditated suicide by poison and by drowning. 
On the authority of Suetonius, from whom we 
get these particulars, “ he frequently affirmed 
that he was haunted by his mother’s ghost,” 
by the specter of her whose life he had wick¬ 
edly taken. 

Follow him to his miserable end, and you 
see him fleeing from his pursuers with muffled 
head, with bare feet, and in an old soiled cloak. 
You see him threading his way through bushes 
and brambles, creeping through a hole in a 
wall, and during all his pitiable flight from 
justice actually “ weeping ” like a child. You 
see him snatching up his daggers and nerv¬ 
ously feeling their points; you hear his last 
words in reply to proffered help, “ Too late; ” 
you see him, with the assistance of a servant, 
driving a dagger into his own throat and ex¬ 
piring, to the great relief of an empire. 

Was then the appeal unto Csesar in vain? 
The life and death of apostle and emperor 
must have made their impression at the time, 
nor has the lesson for good of the striking 
comparison ceased. A similar appeal is still 
made. The contrast between the lives and 
deaths of the righteous and wicked must ever 
exert a powerful influence in favor of the 


170 The Trend of the Centuries 

Christian religion. The superior morality of 
the Church to that of the world, the differ¬ 
ence of the two modes of living as related to 
the dying hour, these are arguments for Chris¬ 
tianity which never lose their weight. 

But the Caesar, to whom the appeal of the 
gospel was made, was not always a ISTero. We 
have drawn a contrast between two represen¬ 
tatives of the empire of the Caesars and the 
kingdom of the truth in the first century, and 
let us next do the same with two leading 
spirits of the second century. We will take 
Marcus Aurelius, of whom a fine equestrian 
statue, that commanded the admiration of 
Michael Angelo, still stands on the Capitoline 
Hill. In a public square of Rome can also be 
seen an Aurelian column, on which there is a 
representation of soldiers catching rain in their 
helmets, possibly to commemorate that provi¬ 
dential shower which is said to have refreshed 
the Roman army sufficiently to enable it to 
turn threatening defeat into a splendid tri¬ 
umph, and which is said to have come in an¬ 
swer to prayer by a legion composed of Chris¬ 
tians, who no sooner sent their petitions up to 
heaven than the thunder began to roll and the 
lightning to flash, while the rains descended 
and brought refreshment and victory, and un¬ 
dying fame to those soldiers of the cross who 


The Appeal Unto Caesar 171 

have ever since been known as the Thunder¬ 
ing Legion. 

We will take the emperor who is thus re¬ 
called, and compare him with Polycarp, the 
latter, it used to be supposed, having suffered 
martyrdom in the reign of the former. It is 
now thought that this tragedy occurred under 
his immediate predecessor, half a dozen years 
before Aurelius came to the throne, but as 
both these emperors persecuted the Christians, 
and as Marcus Aurelius is the more distin¬ 
guished and the more excellent of the two, we 
will take him as the representative of the 
empire. His reign is included in the age of 
the Antonines, which Gibbon pronounces the 
golden age of the world’s history; of all the 
different ages, the period, says this historian, 
“during which the condition of the human 
race was most happy and prosperous.” 

There was much in the reign of Aurelius to 
justify this exaggerated statement. He was a 
moral philosopher, and his “ Meditations ” is 
one of the few books which are read through 
successive generations. Some of his precepts 
seem almost inspired, such as, “ When you see 
others sin, reflect that you also sin in various 
ways,” which reminds us of the Scriptural in¬ 
junction to be compassionate to the erring, 
“ lest thou also be tempted.” He once re- 


IJ2 The Trend of the Centuries 

gretted the death of a prominent subject who 
had led a formidable revolt, because the un¬ 
timely end of the traitor prevented the exer¬ 
cise of the imperial clemency, and he asked 
the Senate not to punish the adherents of the 
deceased. “ Preserve,” he said, “ my reign un¬ 
stained by senatorial blood.” He certainly 
had a large charity of its kind, and especially 
since at his request the Roman Senate declared 
his wife, a woman of most unsavory reputa¬ 
tion, to be a goddess. But as he had adopted 
the Stoic doctrine, “ Live according to nature,” 
he probably, like some modern teachers, re¬ 
garded sin as only an amiable weakness or as a 
misfortune. His idea was that fate governed 
all, and such a theory does not leave much 
room for human responsibility. 

Like liberalists of to-day, however, he had 
no sympathy for Christianity. The gospel ap¬ 
pealed unto Caesar in the person of Marcus 
Aurelius, and what reception was given by 
him to the Christian religion ? He was en¬ 
raged at what he called the “ mere obstinacy ” 
of the Christians, and he waged against them 
a most bitter persecution in Gaul or France, 
where the ashes of the martyrs were scattered 
upon the river Rhone with the cruel taunt, 
referring to their belief in a resurrection, 
“We will now see whether they will arise.” 


The Appeal Unto Csesar 173 

Now if Aurelius did not actually issue the 
death-warrant of Poly carp at Smyrna, it is 
only because his predecessor anticipated him 
by five or six years. 

Let us glance for a little at the life and death 
of this saint. He had been a personal dis¬ 
ciple of the apostle John, being about thirty 
years old when this last of the Twelve died 
not far from 100 A. d. He loved to recall his 
apostolic associations of the past. Irenaeus, 
who had sat at his feet, writes subsequently 
of him as follows : “ I can tell the very place 
in which the blessed Poly carp used to sit when 
he discoursed, and his goings out, and his 
comings in, and his manner of life, and his 
personal appearance, and the discourses which 
he held before the people, and how he would 
describe his intercourse with John and with 
the rest of those who had seen the Lord, and 
how he would relate their words.” 

But this bishop of Smyrna, who had talked 
so divinely, was not allowed to live in Gib¬ 
bon’s golden age of the Antonines. During 
some pagan festivals at Smyrna, a fierce per¬ 
secution was inaugurated against the Chris¬ 
tians, eleven of whom were thrown to the wild 
beasts, and the life of the godly and aged 
Poly carp was demanded. He fled into the 
country, and to a small cottage, where his 


174 The Trend of the Centuries 

place of concealment was betrayed by a slave 
boy from whom the secret was wrested by 
torture. At his request, his persecutors were 
given refreshments, he himself at the time be¬ 
ing at supper. He was allowed one hour for 
prayer, and so engaged did he become that 
two hours were passed in his devotions. He 
was then conducted a prisoner into the city, 
being met in the suburbs by the chief of police, 
who took him into his chariot, and tried to 
persuade him to recant, but who, failing in this, 
angrily thrust him out of the chariot, to be 
seriously lamed by the fall to the ground. He 
was compelled to walk the rest of the way 
notwithstanding his lameness. He was forced 
on to the stadium, of which the remains still 
exist, and at the appearance of his gray head 
a shout of satisfaction was raised. 

He was asked to revile Christ, whereupon 
he returned the famous answer, “ Eighty and 
six years have I served him, and he hath done 
me no wrong. How then can I speak evil of 
my King who saved me ? ” And when he said 
plainly, “ I am a Christian,” there arose the 
cry, “ Away with the father of Christians! ” 
and he was doomed to the stake. Three days 
before, he had dreamed that his pillow was on 
fire, and on rel°ting the dream had said, “I 
must be burned alive,” and it was even so, but 


The Appeal Unto Caesar 175 

amid the very flames he prayed and thanked 
God that he was permitted to give a martyr’s 
testimony to the truth. There was victory in 
death itself. 

How Marcus Aurelius died is not specifi¬ 
cally related, but probably with that stoical 
resignation which surrendered, says Neander, 
“even personal existence to the annihilation 
demanded by the iron law of the universal 
whole.” The emperor’s own sentiments when 
in health were, “ The soul, when it must de¬ 
part from the body, should be ready to be ex¬ 
tinguished, to be dispersed.” In that cold and 
hopeless unbelief he met his fate in a military 
campaign on the frozen Danube. 

Paul and Hero, Poly carp and Marcus Aure¬ 
lius ; the gospel in a measure went down be¬ 
fore both these Caesars, its appeal in one sense 
being unsuccessful. Open wickedness and 
proud morality both were steeled against the 
heavenly influence. The appeal unto Caesar 
was not heeded, and yet, as in the time of the 
apostle, so in the time of the successor to the 
apostle, a salutary impression was being made, 
the adherents of the good cause were continu¬ 
ally multiplying. The empire itself did not 
yet receive Christianity, but it was being pre¬ 
pared therefor. It could not always resist the 
argument of self-denying lives and triumphant 


176 The Trend of the Centuries 

deaths in the Church as against the haughty 
self-sufficiency and the cheerless end of tlje 
Stoic. 

Nor can our Caesars now, our imperial mor¬ 
alists, present to the world such attractive 
lives and such peaceful deaths as our humble 
Christians can. Steadily the appeal unto Cae¬ 
sar is having its effect. People do not alto¬ 
gether admire the charity of liberalists, who 
look upon evil as necessary, who excuse sin as 
misfortune, but who somehow like Marcus 
Aurelius are very bitter against Christians, 
whose holy lives and tranquil deaths are 
nevertheless manifest. It is being seen by all 
fair observers, that Christianity seeks and 
saves the lost, as morality (using that word in 
its technical sense) does not. It is being more 
and more generally recognized that the gospel 
ennobles life and transfigures death, as no 
theory of Stoics or fatalists or moralists does 
or can. 

The years rolled on, the Eoman empire 
dragged its slow length along, but never did 
Caesar get away from the gospel’s persistent 
appeal. A few prominent examples only are 
being selected to illustrate our theme. A 
striking picture might be drawn of Trajan and 
the Coliseum, in which Ignatius, said by a 
legend to have been the child taken in Christ’s 


l 77 


The Appeal Unto Caesar 

arms on a memorable occasion, was devoured 
by the lions about 115 a. d. in that very 
amphitheater still existing in the massive ruins 
with which poet and painter have made us 
familiar. The spirit of the martyr might al¬ 
most be imagined to be hovering “ midst the 
chief relics of almighty Kome,” midst the 
“broken arches,” and midst the trees that 
wave “ dark in the blue midnight.” 

The terrible facts of the Decian persecution, 
and of the Diocletian, might be related: the 
impaling alive, the roasting by slow fires, the 
thrusting of splinters under the nails into 
sensitive nerves, the pouring of molten lead 
down the throat, and all the other refinements 
of cruelty which make the heart grow sick. 
But there is not time for these horrible details, 
even if there were the inclination; a single em¬ 
peror a century is enough. We have had Nero 
of the first and Marcus Aurelius of the second. 

For the third century we will take Valerian, 
as exemplifying another phase of the truth we 
are considering. He was of noble birth. He 
rose in military life, becoming a successful 
general. He advanced till he reached the 
summit of human ambition, till he sat on the 
throne of the Caesars. But there came re¬ 
verses by which he fell, becoming a prisoner 
of war in the hands of a Persian monarch. 


178 The Trend of the Centuries 

Bound with chains and arrayed in the imperial 
purple, he was exhibited, says Gibbon, “ a 
constant spectacle of fallen greatness.” The 
haughty Persian boasted of mounting his horse 
by placing a foot on the neck of a Roman em¬ 
peror, who finally died of shame and grief, 
while, says the historian already quoted, his 
very “ skin, stuffed with straw, and formed in 
the likeness of a human figure, was preserved 
for ages in the most celebrated temple of 
Persia.” A most lamentable end, we say, of a 
glorious career, but Yalerian is never thought 
of as a martyr ; he died for no great principle. 
His was wholly a worldly policy. His motto 
was simply success. There was no moral 
power in his life, and his tragic end has noth¬ 
ing in it of the heroic and grand to stir the 
heart of posterity. 

He might have been remembered for his 
virtues, and not for his checkered career, since 
the gospel appealed unto him for protection 
and adoption, but he chose rather to array the 
government of the Caesars against the Chris¬ 
tian religion. Africa felt the weight of his 
edicts of persecution. The old cry of the 
Punic wars was renewed, “ Carthago delenda 
est,”—Carthage must be destroyed! Her 
bishop, the great Cyprian, was singled out as 
the leading offender. 


l 79 


The Appeal Unto Csesar 

He, too, like the emperor, had distinguished 
parentage. He was horn to wealth, but he 
sold his estates, and devoted the proceeds to 
the cause of religion. He had brilliant tal¬ 
ents, but he consecrated them all to the serv¬ 
ice of the Master. Exile did not silence him, 
for from his banishment he sent words of en¬ 
couragement to his flock, and especially to 
those who had been condemned to labor in 
the mines. There, he wrote to them, “the 
body is refreshed not by beds and pillows, but 
by the comforts and joys of Christ.” Vale¬ 
rian, however, was not to be foiled in his pur¬ 
pose of exterminating Christianity, and there¬ 
fore he resorted to the sword. He soon 
had Cyprian in his power, and when his court 
pronounced the sentence of capital punish¬ 
ment, the good bishop broke out, “ God be 
thanked ! ” Conducted to a wooded place out¬ 
side of the city, Cyprian calmly laid aside his 
outer garments, directed his weeping friends 
to present the executioner, after the bloody 
deed had been done, with twenty-five pieces 
of gold; and then he kneeled in prayer, gave 
the signal for the fatal stroke by covering his 
face with his hands, and thereupon the head 
of a prince in the Church rolled in the 
dust. 

Hot long after this, Valerian came to his ig- 


180 The Trend of the Centuries 

nominious end under the Persian king, but 
how different the emotions excited by the two 
deaths! The one had led a life of personal 
aggrandizement, the other a life of unselfish 
ministration to others, and the fate of the em¬ 
peror is regarded as only a rather startling re¬ 
versal of fortune, from the empire of the 
world to be a stepping-stone for an eastern 
monarch, while the martyrdom of the bishop 
speaks of devotion to a principle, of loyalty to 
the truth. 

And this is what is still winning hearts ; 
not earthly glory, for all history testifies to 
the uncertainty of that; but heavenly conse¬ 
cration, for that alone endures, lending a halo 
even to apparently untimely deaths. The 
throne of a Caesar does not compare with king- 
ship as bestowed by Christ; the one is tem¬ 
porary, the other is eternal. This was 
recognized by more and more in the empire, 
and it was only a question of time as to when 
the appeal unto Caesar should meet with favor 
and prevail. Paul went down before Nero, 
Polycarp before the same power in the next 
century as represented at its best by Marcus 
Aurelius, and Cyprian went down before Va¬ 
lerian, but these were only different stages of 
the battle, which eventually was to terminate 
in victory for the Christian Church. 


The Appeal Unto Caesar 181 

The fourth century witnessed the triumph 
in the conversion of the emperor Constantine 
the Great. You recollect how at a crisis in 
his life he saw, or thought he saw, a resplen¬ 
dent cross in the sky, with the inscription, “ by 
this CONQUER.” And while much in his 
reign and in his personal career merits only 
condemnation, all that is glorious and com¬ 
mendable in either is associated with his ac¬ 
ceptance of Christianity. The appeal unto 
Caesar at last prevailed, and the Roman eagle 
on the imperial standard was displaced by the 
Cross of Calvary. Caesarism went down before 
Christianity, and from that time the religion 
of Christ has been the predominating influence 
in giving shape to what is termed civilization, 
and the product has been Christian Europe. 
After three centuries of persecution came tol¬ 
eration and fostering care. 

To be sure, under the lead of that cultured 
but misguided emperor, known as Julian the 
Apostate, there was an attempt to revive 
paganism, but the effort failed ; the current of 
history, the course of Providence, could not be 
turned back. In the battle of the East where 
he met his fate, Julian may not have fallen, 
as has been asserted and also denied, with the 
cry, “Nazarene, thou hast conquered!” but 
this conquest was a fact. When at one time 


182 The Trend of the Centuries 


this emperor seemed likely to succeed, his 
friend, the rhetorician Libanius, scornfully 
said to a Christian priest, “ What is your car¬ 
penter’s Son doing now ? ” and the undaunted 
reply was, “ He is now making a coffin for 
your emperor.” And it was even so ; hea¬ 
thenism as a system of worship was forever 
buried by the rising and splendidly victorious 
Christian religion. 

There was the immorality of those like 
Hero to contend with; there was the spiritual 
pride of philosophers like Marcus Aurelius 
forming another obstacle to the progress of 
the gospel; there was the dazzling glory 
which turned the heads of such as Valerian to 
act as a hindrance, but over all Christianity 
finally triumphed. The purer, the warmer, 
the more consecrated lives of a Paul, a Poly¬ 
carp and a Cyprian, had their silent and in¬ 
creasing effect. Especially did the happy 
deaths of believers as contrasted with the 
mournful ends of unbelievers constitute an ap¬ 
peal which the Caesars themselves could not 
forever withstand. The Constantines must 
yield and find their highest glory in the 
cross. 

To the imperial soul of man, to the great 
empire of immortal spirits, the gospel still 
makes its appeal. The immoral, the spiritually 


The Appeal Unto Caesar 183 

proud, and the desirous of vain glory, are 
asked to compare the lives and deaths of a 
Nero and a Paul, of a Marcus Aurelius and a 
Poly carp, of a Valerian and a Cyprian, and if 
they will fairly consider the appeal as made 
through the centuries, it will be extraordinary 
if they, too, do not, like Constantine, see the 
cross shining in the heavens from horizon to 
zenith. There is nothing like the cross for 
life or death. It transfigures both, and may 
its splendid appeal be heeded by souls of im¬ 
perial dignity and matchless worth ! 




THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 


>* 


u 


And took the crescents. ”— Judges 8 : 21. 






IX 


THE CRESCENT AND THE CROSS 

The crescent is a significant symbol. It 
speaks of a new moon that is increasing to the 
full. We even have the crescendo in music to 
indicate a constantly increasing volume of 
voice, or the swell of a mighty organ to its full 
power. The Turkish empire, the chief expo¬ 
nent of Mohammedanism at present, has there¬ 
fore adopted for its standard that which re¬ 
minds of growing strength and beauty. But 
the Turks found the crescent already associated 
with Constantinople, when they made this city 
the capital of their wide dominion. As far 
back as 340 b. c., during a siege of the city by 
Philip of Macedon, the crescent figures in a 
story of the city’s deliverance. The guards 
one dark night by a bright rim of lunar light 
were enabled to see the approach of the be¬ 
siegers and to drive them back. In commem¬ 
oration of this event, we are informed, coins 
were struck with the imprint of a crescent, and 
this beautiful circle of light was thus closely 
identified with the history of Constantinople 
187 


188 The Trend of the Centuries 


from the earliest times. The Turks, upon cap¬ 
turing the city and making it the seat of their 
empire, would find what they had previously 
adopted as their striking emblem to be doubly 
significant. 

It seems almost a pity that Christians could 
not have appropriated this luminous sign for 
their widening realm. Indeed, in the ages of 
Christian chivalry, of military and religious 
orders of noble knights, there was one order 
whose badge was a crescent of gold, with the 
inscription in red letters, praise to that 
which increases. And yet this cheering 
symbol has by force of unfortunate circum¬ 
stances become largely associated with that 
which is evil. The enemies of Israel in the 
days of Gideon had the crescent wrought on 
the trappings of their camels. The daughters 
of Zion were once condemned by Isaiah for 
becoming haughty, and for adopting heathen¬ 
ish customs : they “ walk,” said the prophet, 
“ with stretched forth necks and wanton eyes, 
walking and mincing as they go, and making 
a tinkling with their feet.” Among the flashy 
articles worn by them are mentioned pendants, 
and bracelets, and ankle chains, and nose jew¬ 
els, “ and the crescents,” or, as the old version 
has it, “ round tires like the moon.” Among 
the proud trophies of war taken by Mohammed 


The Crescent and the Cross 189 

were jeweled crescents, and the crescent has 
become a synonym in history for the Moham¬ 
medan religion. We take for our theme, The 
Crescent and the Cross. In broad outline we 
wil] trace the victories of the Saracens; for 
God’s people, instead of taking the crescents, 
were long taken thereby. 

First, the life and career of Mohammed will 
for a little occupy our attention. He was born 
at Mecca in Arabia, probably 572 A. D., and 
being left an orphan at six he was brought up 
by a merchant uncle, whose traveling salesman 
and camel driver he became. At twenty-five 
he became the commercial agent of a wealthy 
and noble widow, Kadijah. He had keen eyes, 
an expressive face, a pleasing address, and a 
fine mind. He won the heart of her whom he 
served, and he became her husband, though he 
was fifteen years younger than she was. 
Placed in easy circumstances by his marriage, 
he led a life of religious contemplation, spend¬ 
ing months in meditating in a cave not far 
away. 

For fifteen years he dreamed his dreams. He 
was subject to epilepsy, which produced ex¬ 
traordinary mental states. He had ecstasies 
and visions, which we would call hallucinations, 
and which he himself at first thought to be the 
workings of evil spirits, but which his wife de- 


190 The Trend of the Centuries 

dared to he divine revelations, and she per¬ 
suaded him into this belief. At the age of 
forty, while he was alone in his cave he had a 
crowning vision, wherein he imagined that the 
angel Gabriel appeared to him and gave him 
his great commission, whose watchword was 
to be, “ There is one God, and Mohammed is 
his prophet.” He went forth preaching the 
unity of God, the immortality of the soul, and 
future rewards and punishments. He put an 
interdict upon wine, he made Friday a Sabbath, 
and he enjoined a month of fasting for each 
year. Through thirteen years of opposition he 
worked out his system in detail, borrowing 
from the Old Testament and the Hew, ac¬ 
knowledging Moses and Christ to be prophets, 
but making himself to be the one whose com¬ 
ing both these foretold. He added vision¬ 
ary ideas of his own to the Scriptural ideas 
which he borrowed and perverted. The 
result was the Koran, which, however, was 
not published till two years after his death, 
to be known ever after as the Mohammedan 
Bible. 

His first convert was his wife, and that he 
appreciated her devotion is evident from what 
he subsequently said, when he had more than 
a dozen wives, and when a favorite of these 
asked him if she was not better than his early 


The Crescent and the Cross 191 

love, whose memory, now that she was dead, 
he tenderly cherished. He replied that no one 
equaled her, adding, “ She believed in me when 
no one else did. In the whole world I had but 
one friend, and she was that friend. ,, His con¬ 
verts did not multiply as he had hoped. He 
was jeered at, and was told to attest his 
prophetic claims by working a miracle—by 
producing, for instance, a garden in a desert. 
He refused to perform any miraculous signs on 
the ground of not wanting to decrease the 
merit of faith by making it too easy to believe. 
While he did not claim to work miracles, his 
followers, after his decease, did not hesitate to 
strengthen his position by citing alleged super¬ 
natural confirmations of his mission. One of 
the wonders related was that the moon once 
circled round him seven times, and then, con¬ 
tracting in size, our satellite “ entered at the 
collar, and issued forth through the sleeve, of 
his shirt.” The prophet himself expressly dis¬ 
claimed the use of the miraculous. He simply 
proclaimed what he deemed to be the truth in 
its native strength. 

For thirteen years he endeavored thus to 
gain adherents, but with small success, and 
amid a growing opposition, till his enemies 
matured a plot to put an end to his life. 
Learning of their intention, he fled from 


192 The Trend of the Centuries 

Mecca. He was pursued, but he found a 
hiding-place in a cave, which his pursuers did 
not enter, because a spider had woven its web 
across the mouth of the cavern, and it was 
therefore believed that he could not have been 
within. Had it not been for that silken door 
to the cave, entrance thereto would have been 
made, Mohammed would have been slain, and, 
as Gibbon has said, the lance of an Arab 
would have changed the history of the world. 
On such small contingencies do great events 
and movements depend. 

After a proper interval the prophet emerged 
from his retreat so providentially guarded. 
He continued his flight to Medina, where he 
received a royal welcome, and his fortunes 
began to rise, his crescent began to grow. 
This eventful flight is accordingly the familiar 
Hegira from which Mohammedan time is reck¬ 
oned, the year 1 of the prophet corresponding 
to our 622 A. d. With the accession of power 
in his new and more favorable surroundings 
came a change of policy. For persuasion was 
substituted the sword, and while Jews and 
Christians were to be given their choice of the 
Koran, or tribute, or death, all others were to 
be exterminated. The faithful, who should 
die in the war of conquest to be relentlessly 
waged, were promised a paradise where would 


The Crescent and the Cross 193 

flow crystal and perfumed streams, where 
would be given golden garments flashing with 
diamonds and other precious stones, and where 
particularly for the delectation of all true Mos¬ 
lems would be black-eyed girls whose youth¬ 
ful charms would never fade. These last 
pleasures were not to be denied the faithful 
even in this life, for polygamy became a lead¬ 
ing doctrine of Mohammed, and he practised 
what he taught by taking to himself several 
wives. 

When such were the alluring inducements 
and prospects, naturally the Arabs flocked to 
the standard of the prophet, who with ten 
thousand of them went back to Mecca, and 
made it forever his. He rapidly extended his 
dominion, till all Arabia was at his feet, piously 
kissing the famous Black &tone, which was sup¬ 
posed to have come down from heaven, which 
may have been of meteoric origin, and which 
to this day lies built into the wall of the 
smaller temple over which the magnificent 
Mosque of Mecca stands. In Arabia itself the 
Mohammedan movement is by many recognized 
to have been desirable, in that idols were de¬ 
throned from the historic Kaaba, or central 
temple, and the worship of one God was in¬ 
augurated, while at the same time there was 
secured the political union of hitherto wander- 


194 The Trend of the Centuries 

ing and separated and mutually warring tribes. 
Their tents were as shifting as the sands of the 
desert which was so largely their home. The 
language of Longfellow, 

“ Shall fold their tents like the Arabs, 

And as silently steal away,” 


well indicates the nomadic nature of the people 
whom Mohammed cemented into a great and 
strong nation. 

So successful was the prophet in this that he 
next began to plan for universal empire, and as 
even Christendom had practically become wor¬ 
shipers of idols in multitudinous images of the 
saints, his purpose to destroy idolatry widened 
in its scope. He was arranging for a campaign 
against the Eastern or Greek empire, and when 
his followers demurred to the taking of the 
long and weary march in the heat of summer, 
he retorted in those celebrated words, “ Hell is 
much hotter.” But he did not live to see his 
ambitious scheme take shape. His health be¬ 
came enfeebled, and he gradually sank, till in 
the year 632 A. D. at the age of sixty-three he 
died, with his head in the lap of his youngest 
and favorite wife, and he was buried at Medina 
under the first mosque that was built for the 
rising faith of absolute submission to the 


The Crescent and the Cross 195 

divine will. Such was the remarkable man 
who flung the crescent to the breeze for uni¬ 
versal empire. 

"We turn next to the marvelous development 
of Mohammed’s power under his successors. 
We can only take a quick survey of whole 
centuries. Westward the course of Moham¬ 
medan empire took its way over Egypt, on to 
Carthage, which was destroyed in a way that 
would have satisfied those ancient Romans, 
whose senate hall used to echo with the cry 
for its demolition. Clear through northern 
Africa swept the followers of the crescent, 
blotting out four hundred seats of Christian 
bishoprics, and so effectually that the very 
memory of Christianity perished for ages in a 
country where stately cathedrals long flour¬ 
ished. Cyrene' which furnished the Saviour’s 
cross-bearer, and which received converts from 
Pentecost, was overwhelmed by the Arabian 
conquerors, and when their proud leader was 
stopped by the Atlantic ocean, he spurred his 
chafing steed into the salt waves, and ex¬ 
claimed, “ Great God, if my course were not 
stopped by this sea, I would go on to the un¬ 
known kingdoms of the West, preaching the 
unity of thy holy name, and putting to the 
sword the rebellious nations who worship any 
other gods than thee.” 


196 The Trend of the Centuries 

The tumultuous host was checked only to 
turn northward. The victorious troops looked 
across the narrow strait separating them from 
Spain at the Pillars of Hercules; they went 
over, and Gibraltar, named thus from their 
commander, commemorates the triumphant 
passage. They conquered all Spain, they 
poured over the Pyrenees into France, and 
they were moving on for the conquest of all 
Europe and for the obliteration of Christianity, 
when in the vicinity of Tours there met the 
hitherto invincible Arabs, 732 A. D., the sturdy 
Franks under Charles Martel, that is, Charles 
the Hammer, who dealt his heavy blows, till 
three hundred thousand of the enemy lay dead 
on the field. This was one of the decisive and 
epochal battles in the world’s history, for it 
saved Christian Europe from extinction under 
the hoofs of the fiery chargers that had borne 
their riders from distant Arabia. 

The Saracens were forced back into Spain, 
but there they stayed for more than seven 
centuries. In the Moors they rose to great 
power, and the splendor of their reign is still 
sung by poets and chanted by historians. 
Charlemagne crowded them still farther back 
toward Africa, but not till the time of Ferdi¬ 
nand, on the eve of the discovery of America 
by Columbus, who sailed forth under the au- 


The Crescent and the Cross 197 

spices of this monarch and of queen Isabella, 
—not till so late a date were the Moors ex¬ 
pelled from Spanish soil, as they made their 
last stand at Granada, where rose the cele¬ 
brated Alhambra, a palace and a fortress that 
is yet beautiful even in its ruins. The keys of 
this were yielded up to Ferdinand and Isabella, 
a massive silver cross was borne triumphantly 
into the Moorish capital, and thus, as a poet 
has said, 


‘ 1 Down from the Alhambra’s minarets 
Were all the crescents flung.” 

But eastward also the star of Saracen em¬ 
pire went,—over Persia, on to India, over 
Palestine, and in Jerusalem where had stood 
the Jewish temple, Omar, successor of the 
prophet, erected a mosque which still bears 
his name. At Bagdad the caliphs rivaled the 
splendor reached by the Moors in Spain, and 
especially at the close of the eighth century 
under Haroun, or Aaron the Just, who is the 
fascinating hero of'the “ Arabian Nights,” 
that wonderful book which is the delight of 
children. Under him the arts and sciences 
flourished, and there was an Asiatic magnifi¬ 
cence simply regal. It was this caliph, who, 
upon receiving from the emperor at Constanti¬ 
nople a challenge to war in a sheaf of swords, 


198 The Trend of the Centuries 

literally hewed the whole bundle to pieces 
with his exquisitely tempered Damascus Blade 
without so much as turning its edge, and who 
exacted of the Christian monarch on the 
Bosporus a heavy tribute. 

That imperial city by the Golden Horn had 
eventually to succumb to the Mohammedans. 
It repelled the attacks of the seventh and 
eighth centuries with its terrible Greek fire, 
whose composition it long kept a secret. 
With this mysterious combustible, which 
belched forth consuming flames that were not 
extinguished but rather quickened by water, 
Constantinople for a while was safe from the 
Saracens, but the day of subjugation came. 
Where the caliphs had ruled the Turks set up 
their dominion, and while they gained politi¬ 
cal supremacy, they were religiously conquered 
by the faith of the Moslems, and their banner, 
shining with the crescent, carried Moham¬ 
medanism wherever they went. Under Mo¬ 
hammed the Second, the Turks laid siege to 
Constantinople in 1453 . The besieged, not¬ 
withstanding one immense gun, which threw 
to the distance of a mile a stone ball of six 
hundred pounds, but which could be fired only 
a few times in a day r —notwithstanding this 
and other engines of war the besieged de¬ 
fended themselves valiantly, and in their 


The Crescent and the Cross 


*99 

direst straits they were encouraged on behold¬ 
ing far out to sea the white sails of five ships 
coining to their relief with provisions. The 
Turkish boats pushed out to meet the little 
fleet, they rode the water in crescent shape, 
but they were scattered by Greek fire and can¬ 
non shot, and hope sprang again into the faint¬ 
ing hearts of the Christians. The Turks, how¬ 
ever, pressed the siege, until Constantinople 
was taken, and the Ottoman empire was es¬ 
tablished on the ruins of the Eastern or 
Greek ; and St. Sophia, where had been Chris¬ 
tian worship ever since the days of Justinian, 
and in the original cathedral ever since the 
time of Constantine in the fourth century, be¬ 
came a Mohammedan mosque, and it remains 
such to the present. But the baneful power 
of the Turk has for a considerable time been 
dwindling, and we may well rejoice at the 
downfall of the iniquitous system, with its deg¬ 
radation of woman, with its moral grossness, 
with its political despotism, with its deification 
of power rather than of holiness, and with its 
exaltation of divine sovereignty to the de¬ 
struction of free will and to the production 
of fatalism. 

Still the Mohammedans of all kinds yet hold 
wide sway. They number nearly two hun¬ 
dred millions around the whole earth. A mis- 


200 The Trend of the Centuries 


sionary among them has used this graphic 
language: “ When the morning sun rises from 
the Pacific Ocean eager eyes are straining from 
the minarets of China to catch the first beams 
of that sun; and . . . the song goes up, 

4 There is no God but God ’; and that song is 
caught up and carried from minaret to minaret, 
across the whole breadth of China. It re¬ 
sounds in the valleys of the Himalayas; its 
echo is heard all over the plains of India. It 
sounds out in the islands of the Indian Ocean. 
It is caught up, and echoed back across Persia, 
far along from peak to peak. . . . It is 

carried down into the great Arabian peninsula, 
and then it is taken up in the valley of the 
Nile. It is carried to the head waters of the 
Nile, the great lake region, and it sweeps 
across the Soudan and the Sahara, and not till 
the sun has set in the Atlantic are its last 
echoes overcome by the roar of the surf of 
that western sea.” We are reminded of Daniel 
Webster’s historic characterization of the Eng¬ 
lish power, which, he said, 44 has dotted over 
the surface of the whole globe with her pos¬ 
sessions and military posts, whose morning 
drum-beat, following the sun and keeping 
company with the hours, circles the earth 
with one continuous and unbroken strain of 
the martial airs of England.” Mohammedan- 


The Crescent and the Cross 201 

ism religiously, no less than England politi¬ 
cally, has had a wide extension. 

Christianity, however, is the dominant re¬ 
ligion of the world to-day. The great civilized 
nations, which are steadily extending their 
sway, are Christian and not Saracen, and one- 
half the Moslem population of the globe is un¬ 
der the rule of governments that exalt Christ. 
When the framers of our national constitution 
had finished their work, and were affixing 
their names to the immortal document, Ben¬ 
jamin Franklin pointed to a painting which 
represented the sun at the horizon, and said he 
had often wondered, “in the vicissitudes of 
hope and fear,” as to the issue of their labor, 
whether the sun in the picture was rising or 
setting, but now that they had completed 
their great charter of human liberty, he was 
happy to know that it Avas a rising and not a 
setting sun. The Mohammedan crescent is no 
longer waxing but it is waning, as every stu¬ 
dent of history can now see. The cross is 
rising above the crescent at the very center of 
Mohammedan power, and the former shall yet 
supplant the latter in Constantinople itself, 
where the Turk governs at all only by Euro¬ 
pean sufferance. 

There is an ancient legend which says that 
the apostle Andrew, on his arrival in Con- 


202 The Trend of the Centuries 


stantinople, with his hand pressed the form of 
a cross into the rock. This at least pictures a 
truth. Christianity long centuries ago made 
its impression there. The Roman emperor, 
who gave the city the name it still bears, the 
immortal Constantine, from the time he 
thought he saw the cross emblazoned on the 
sky, had the eagle on his standard displaced 
by this glorious symbol of salvation. In three 
centuries the crimson banner of the gospel 
floated in triumph from the walls of the 
capital of the Roman empire; Christianity 
was everywhere dominant throughout the 
vast realm of the Caesars. But there was to 
come in the providence of God another con¬ 
test. The Christian religion conquered cul¬ 
tured Greece and Rome, and subsequently the 
barbarians of the north, and it is now slowly 
but surely conquering its most formidable foe 
in Mohammedanism. The crescent is steadily 
going down before the cross, and by and by 

u Jesus shall reign where’er the sun 
Does his successive journeys run ; 

His kingdom stretch from shore to shore, 

Till moons shall wax and wane no more.” 

Though there be times of darkness, like the 
period of the atrocious massacre of the Ar¬ 
menians, a tragedy before which all Christian 




The Crescent and the Cross 203 

Europe, notwithstanding her superior power, 
seemed helpless,—at every such trying crisis 
we can say with the poet: 

“Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne, 
Yet that scaffold sways the future, and, behind the dim un¬ 
known, 

Standeth God within the shadow, keeping watch above his 
own. ’ ’ 

















I 


THE CRUSADERS 



* 


“ Nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.”— John 
4 : 21 . 


X 


THE CRUSADERS 

Many are the pilgrims who have journeyed 
to Jerusalem. There they have experienced 
what Milman in his “ History of Latin Chris¬ 
tianity” has called a “blameless at least, if 
not beneficial excitement,” in that “ the pres¬ 
ence, the being of the Kedeemer, is more in¬ 
tensely felt.” Therein we have an explanation 
of the crusades, of what has been termed “ the 
heroic age of Christianity,” when for nearly 
two centuries, the twelfth and thirteenth, all 
Europe was agitated over the recovery of the 
sepulcher of the Lord from infidels, from be¬ 
lievers in the Koran. So important an epoch 
in the history of the Christian Church is not 
unworthy of some consideration. Whether 
with Hume we speak of the crusades “ as the 
most signal and most durable monument of 
human folly that has ever yet appeared in any 
age or nation,” or whether with the more 
broad-minded Guizot we say, “The crusades 
marked the date of the arrest of Islamism, and 
powerfully contributed to the decisive prepon¬ 
derance of Christian civilization ”—in either 
207 


208 The Trend of the Centuries 


view of the matter the striking movement is 
deserving of study. 

It was a combination of good and evil, of 
religious enthusiasm and worldly ambition, 
and though Gibbon refers contemptuously to 
the anxious concern for “a tombstone two 
thousand miles ” away, he yet recognizes that 
with the desire of “ military glory ” there was 
united “ the purest piety.’’ Christ himself, had 
he been on the earth, would have condemned 
the repeated attempts of the crusaders to 
rescue the holy city from its Mohammedan 
conquerors, but he would have approved the 
glorying in the cross, which was so marked a 
feature in the great enterprise. There never 
was more splendid devotion to a cause than 
was found in those who rallied around the 
cross as against the crescent; and there never 
was a more prodigious mistake made than when 
it was supposed that Jerusalem and Calvary 
must be the political possession of Christendom. 

And now, without reciting all the horrible 
atrocities practised even by Christian armies; 
without dwelling upon the inevitable con¬ 
comitants of cruel war, especially in barbarous 
times when the humane sentiments of to-day 
did not exist; without relating the dreadful 
massacres of Jews, the roasting alive of infidel 
spies, the slaughtering sometimes of the 


The Crusaders 


209 


enemy’s innocents, even to babes a year old, the 
cutting open of prisoners for the gold which 
they may have swallowed for safe keeping; 
—omitting these common details of ancient 
warfare everywhere, let us proceed to gather 
the great central and glowing facts. 

For centuries there had been pilgrimages to 
the Holy Land, not only of peasants but of 
princes, and especially from the time of the 
emperor Constantine the Great, whose mother, 
Helena, went to Jerusalem about 325 a. d., 
and found, she claimed, not only the sepulcher 
but the true cross, while she erected on the 
place of the discovery a church which still re¬ 
mains in part. Three hundred years after 
this, the cross being captured by a Persian in¬ 
vader, but being retaken by the Greek emperor 
Heraclius, he carried it, 629 a. d., on his own 
shoulders to the top of Calvary amid great 
demonstrations of joy. Such were the won¬ 
drous tales told far and wide, and interest was 
naturally stimulated to go to the land of 
miracles, where Christ had lived and died, and 
where there would be many reminders of his 
earthly career. Even when the Mohammedans 
by conquest came into possession of Palestine 
in the seventh century, the pilgrimages did 
not cease. They seemed rather to increase, 
thousands taking the long journey, separately 


210 The Trend of the Centuries 

and in companies. The under garment, which 
the devout pilgrim wore on first setting foot in 
Jerusalem, was superstitiously laid aside for a 
winding-sheet wherein to be buried. 

But while the Mohammedan rule for a long 
while did not seriously interfere with this 
European stream of pious visitors, in the 
eleventh century there was a change. Chris¬ 
tian pilgrims began to be maltreated. Some 
of them were not privileged to return home. 
Many of them did go back to the various 
countries of Europe, but only to carry the 
news of shocking cruelties which they had 
suffered from the infidels. Soon the whole 
continent of Europe was a slumbering fire, 
which had only to be fanned by some leader 
to break out into a perfect blaze of excitement 
and indignation. 

A French pilgrim, by the name of Peter the 
Hermit, was destined to start the mighty con¬ 
flagration. His impetuous nature resented the 
indignities which he saw and experienced at 
Jerusalem. “ I will rouse the martial nations 
of Europe,” he exclaimed, and he was true to 
his word. He was of insignificant personal 
appearance, but he had an eye which flashed 
fire, and a soul which was vehemence itself. 
On his way home he stopped and inspired 
Pope Urban II with his own thought and 


The Crusaders 


211 


purpose, and receiving the papal benediction he 
went forth on his mission, with bare head and 
feet. He traversed the country, speaking at 
crossroads. He entered cities, and declaimed 
in market-places and cathedrals. From Italy 
he crossed the Alps, and inflamed his native 
France. He had crowds to listen to his fiery 
eloquence. He wielded a tremendous influence. 
The very hairs which fell from the mule he 
rode were treasured as relics. In 1095 a 
council was called in Italy, and nearly thirty- 
five thousand responded; so many that the 
meeting had to be held in the open air. 

Later in the same year, there was a still 
larger assembly in France, and the Pope him¬ 
self was there, and made a thrilling address. 
Again and again he was interrupted with the 
shout, “ God wills it! God wills it! ” and this 
was adopted as the battle-cry. A cross of 
cloth or silk was the badge of enlistment in 
the holy cause. The crusade was now vigor¬ 
ously preached from every pulpit, and in 1096 
three separate companies, aggregating more 
than one hundred thousand persons from 
France and Germany were on the march, 
Peter the Hermit leading the largest division. 
They were motley throngs of men, women 
and children, the bones of most of whom 
whitened the plains that were traversed, only 


212 The Trend of the Centuries 

a small portion of the one hundred thousand 
reaching Constantinople even. And when the 
Greek emperor Alexius had the remnant rab¬ 
ble shipped off across the Bosporus, they were 
there practically annihilated, a pyramid of 
bones marking the spot of their overwhelming 
defeat. Two hundred thousand more of the 
lower classes followed, and likewise perished 
on the way. 

Then regularly organized armies set forth, 
by different routes and under leaders of dis¬ 
tinguished birth and rank, of whom Godfrey 
will ever be held in grateful remembrance for 
his fine qualities. Five hundred thousand foot 
and one hundred thousand horse are said to 
have passed through Constantinople»this time, 
to the consternation of the Greek emperor, 
who, though he had sent to the west for help 
against the Mohammedans, now began to be 
afraid of such hosts of warriors being poured 
through his capital, which had so much to at¬ 
tract ambitious generals. But the six hun¬ 
dred thousand moved on into Asia, which 
Alexander the Great had conquered with not 
many above thirty thousand. They captured 
the city of Nice. With the shout, “ God wills 
it! ” they advanced to other victories. 

There were the usual accompaniments of a 
long march. For one thing they suffered from 


The Crusaders 


213 

thirst, till their dogs by wet paws and coats 
told them of a stream somewhere near by, of 
which they eagerly drank till three hundred 
of them died from excessive draughts of the 
refreshing water. There were perilous adven¬ 
tures. Godfrey, the favorite leader, went to 
the rescue of a pilgrim engaged in a desperate 
fight with a bear, which turned upon the chief¬ 
tain, who was thrown from his rearing horse, 
and who plunged his sword to the hilt into the 
beast’s heart only after being almost torn to 
pieces, receiving wounds which nearly proved 
fatal. 

But these were comparatively trifling in¬ 
cidents. Antioch was reached, and after a 
long siege was taken. The pilgrims were in 
turn besieged by the enemy, who had been re¬ 
inforced. The horrors of famine ensued. The 
crusaders were in despair, till from under the 
altar of a church was dug a spearhead, which 
to one in a vision had been proclaimed to be 
the holy lance that pierced the Saviour’s side. 
Around this precious relic they rallied, they 
sallied forth with new courage, and chanting 
the Sixty-eighth Psalm, “ Let God arise, let his 
enemies be scattered,” they marched into bat¬ 
tle, and after a stubborn contest they tri¬ 
umphed. 

But they had not yet reached the goal of 


214 The Trend of the Centuries 

their great enterprise. Before they reached 
Jerusalem, fifty thousand were swept off by 
an epidemic in a single month, and when they 
came in sight of the holy city, only forty thou¬ 
sand of the six hundred thousand were left. 
But those who had been spared to behold Jeru¬ 
salem were more than repaid. Their mingled 
emotions of sadness and gladness have been 
well described by Tasso in his celebrated 
“ Jerusalem Delivered.” The passage in prose 
has been translated as follows: “ With stifled 
sobs, with sighs and tears, the pent-up yearn¬ 
ings of a people in joy and at the same time in 
sorrow sent shivering through the air a mur¬ 
mur like that which is heard in leafy forests 
what time the wind blows through the leaves.” 

Soon in slow procession they were marching 
round “the city of God,” singing psalms as 
they went, and halting from time to time at 
points of blessed association. There followed 
a siege, and at length, July 14, 1099, at three 
o’clock on Friday afternoon, the day and hour 
of the crucifixion, Jerusalem was in possession 
of the pilgrims, who did not long delay to go 
barefooted and bareheaded to the Holy Sep¬ 
ulcher. Says Tasso of the leader, 

“He reached the temple ; there, supremely bless’d, 

Hung up his arms, his banner’d spoils display’d, 

And at the sacred Tomb his vow’d devotions paid.” 


The Crusaders 


215 

Thus sang the Italian poet of the noble 
Godfrey, so noble that when elected king he 
refused the title for a more modest one, saying 
with a commendable humility, “ I will not 
wear a crown of gold in the place where the 
Saviour of the world was crowned with 
thorns.” 

And so did Europe accomplish its purpose, 
that its inhabitants should be free to worship 
in the holy city. The first crusade (not count¬ 
ing the Hermit’s mobs) was successful, but not 
till nearly a million of people had lost their 
lives. It was a holy war waged by soldiers of 
the cross in direct violation of the command 
of the Captain of our salvation, who expressly 
directed the sword to be put up, and who, as 
if to guard against this very thing of an undue 
veneration for the Holy Land, had declared, 
“Nor in Jerusalem, shall ye worship the 
Father.” 

Six more crusades followed at intervals 
through nearly two centuries, as the changing 
condition of affairs in Palestine seemed to de¬ 
mand. “ Europe was,” as another has said, “ an 
agitated sea, throwing wave after wave upon 
Syrian shores.” The fall of Edessa in 1145 
occasioned the next crusade, of whjch Bernard 
was the great preacher. “ Call to mind,” he 
said, “ the example of your fathers, who con- 


216 The Trend of the Centuries 

quered Jerusalem, and whose names are writ¬ 
ten in heaven ! ” His auditors, after listening 
to his fervid exhortations at a great gathering, 
rushed forward with the cry, “ The cross ! the 
cross! ” Enough sacred badges had not been 
provided for all who volunteered for the cru¬ 
sade. Bernard tore up his robe to make 
crosses. There were crusaders who had the 
cross inserted by indelible ink under the skin, 
and others had it burned into their flesh, being 
literally branded therewith. 

We can hardly conceive of the enthusiasm 
which prevailed. The French king and the 
German emperor, Louis the Seventh and Con¬ 
rad the Third, were induced to enlist, while 
soldiers by the hundred thousand flocked to 
their standards. To such an extent was Eu¬ 
rope’s male population poured forth, that 
Bernard could speak proudly of places where 
there “ was hardly one man to seven women.” 
But nothing in particular was gained by 
this second crusade. The vast armies, of 
over a million, it is estimated, melted away 
like snow before getting as far south as 
Palestine. 

In 118 J Jerusalem fell into the hands of the 
great Saladin, great, and yet at the dying 
hour showing his estimate of human greatness 
by displaying a shroud for a flag. Again was 


The Crusaders 


21 7 


Europe in a ferment of excitement, and an 
English king this time joined his forces with 
those of the monarchs of France and Ger¬ 
many. The three greatest sovereigns of Chris¬ 
tendom led hundreds of thousands on the third 
crusade. It is needless to speak of the Ger¬ 
man emperor’s death from a fever caught in a 
chilling stream before he reached the Holy 
Land; Frederick Barbarossa never saw Jeru¬ 
salem. It is needless to speak of the French 
and English kings quarreling on the very bor¬ 
ders of Palestine, till Philip Augustus returned 
in disgust to France. It is needless to speak 
of the marvelous reputation as a warrior of 
Eichard the Lion-hearted, by whose name Sar¬ 
acen mothers long frightened their children 
into obedience, while, if a horse suddenly 
started out of the road, the rider would say, 
“Dost thou think that King Eichard is in 
that bush?” But even the valiant Eichard 
had to retire, leaving Saladin master of Jeru¬ 
salem, gaining only restricted privileges of 
worship in the holy city, and then setting out 
for England, to be shipwrecked before he got 
there, and to be kept a prisoner in Austria for 
weary weeks and months. Yerily this crusade 
ended ingloriously. 

The fourth crusade was to start from Venice, 
which had risen to great commercial impor- 


218 The Trend of the Centuries 


tance, and which agreed to furnish the neces¬ 
sary ships to transport the army for a specified 
sum of money. When at the time of departure 
part of the stipulated price was lacking, those 
merchants of Venice, unlike Shakespeare’s gen¬ 
erous merchant of Venice, and more like this 
dramatist’s Shylock, insisted upon having ex¬ 
actly what was named in the bond. As this 
could not be furnished, the crusaders were at 
the mercy of their creditors, whose bidding 
they had to do. In gallant ships, 1203 A. D., 
they sailed down the Adriatic, only, how¬ 
ever, to be diverted from Jerusalem, first 
to the conquest of an island which Venice 
wanted subjugated, and secondly to be led 
to Constantinople, and so never to reach 
Jerusalem. 

The fifth crusade, that of the excommuni¬ 
cated Frederick the Second of Germany in 
1229, was a little more successful, as he man¬ 
aged in spite of papal opposition to enter the 
holy city, and with his own hands to put the 
crown upon his head. But he soon returned 
to the more congenial occupation of govern¬ 
ing his own people at home. 

The sixth and seventh crusades in 1248 and 
1270 were the last, and they had less admix¬ 
ture of selfish ambition, and more of real relig¬ 
ious design, than any of the rest, perhaps, 


The Crusaders 


219 

and yet they were failures so far as their main 
object was concerned. 

The prime mover of both these was Louis 
the Ninth of France, who is more of a saint 
than many whom Catholicism has canonized. 
His career touches our sympathies more than 
all else in the crusades, except the sad fate 
of several thousand children who in their pil¬ 
grimage were shipwrecked or sold into slavery. 
Aside from the thousands of children who 
caught the crusading spirit and met with a 
tragic end, there is no one who so enlists our 
warm interest as Saint Louis. 

In his youth at the point of death, when 
one of the attendants was about to draw 
“ the sheet over his face,” the supposed corpse 
moved, rallied, and as soon as he could speak 
asked to have placed upon his shoulder “ the 
cross of the voyage over the sea.” He had 
resolved, if he recovered, to be a crusader. 
His advisers afterward endeavored to dissuade 
him from his resolution, made, they intimated, 
at a moment of weakness. He listened atten¬ 
tively to their pleas, and then, with deep emo¬ 
tion undoing the cross from his shoulder, he 
handed it back amid congratulations all around, 
when unexpectedly he said, “ My friends, now, 
assuredly, I lack not sense and reason; I am 
neither weak nor wandering of mind; and I 


220 The Trend of the Centuries 

demand my cross back again.” He parted 
from his mother, who with a burst of affec¬ 
tion said, “ Most sweet, fair son. ... I 
shall never see you more.” With a small but 
“ picked army ” of forty thousand he entered 
on the voyage over the Mediterranean, and 
landed in Egypt, where he was defeated, and 
where he refused to avail himself of an op¬ 
portunity personally to escape, thereby leav¬ 
ing his faithful followers in the power of the 
enemy. He remained with them to be taken 
a prisoner, till a ransom released them all. 
He sailed directly to the Holy Land, where 
he lingered till he heard of the death of his 
mother. Throwing up his arms he exclaimed 
pathetically, “I have lost my mother!” and 
then he took ship for his native land and for 
his kingdom, and the sixth crusade was 
closed. 

He ruled his people wisely and well for six¬ 
teen years, when, in 1270, to their great sorrow 
he departed once more to rescue Jerusalem 
and the Sepulcher from profane masters. He 
went by way of Tunis, northern Africa, where 
he hoped to convert a Mohammedan king, who 
was reported to be favorably disposed toward 
Christianity. He arrived, but was prostrated 
with the African fever. He grew worse, he 
was manifestly nearing his end, he gave part- 


The Crusaders 


221 


ing instructions to all, including a weeping 
daughter standing at the foot of his bed. He 
fixed his dying gaze upon the cross with a 
rapturous expression, he partly rose and said 
ecstatically, “Jerusalem! Jerusalem! we will 
go up to Jerusalem!” He sank back—dead, 
gone not to the earthly but to the heavenly 
Jerusalem. 

From his death, after a brief and vain at¬ 
tempt of Edward the First of England to 
carry out the plan of Saint Louis, and after 
more than two million lives in all had been 
sacrificed, there were, after the seventh, no 
more crusades. 

The seven efforts had failed, or the eight 
and nine had, if the differentiation of other 
authorities is adopted, for historians do not 
agree in their numbering. Naturally there is 
this variation, for waves following one an¬ 
other in close succession cannot be sharply 
separated. But they all, whether counted as 
seven or eight or nine, were a failure. 

After two centuries of misdirected effort 
the Church finally learned the lesson, “ Nor in 
Jerusalem, shall ye worship the Father.” 

What is the conclusion of the whole matter ? 
The crusades with all their folly and tragedy 
yet tended, as the best writers claim, to the 
furtherance of civilization. If they did not 


222 The Trend of the Centuries 

roll back the tide of Mohammedanism, they at 
least, says the highest historic authority, 
marked the “ date of the arrest of Islamism,” 
and perhaps checked its farther extension into 
Europe. They freed Christians from provin¬ 
cialism, broadened their minds, as traveling 
always does, though of the pilgrimage order, 
and they unified Christendom. They aroused 
noble enthusiasms, and developed heroic quali¬ 
ties of character. They especially contributed 
very powerfully to the breaking down of feu¬ 
dalism, which had divided Europe into a mul¬ 
titude of petty sovereignties. 

The continent had been covered with little 
feudal dependencies, each of which consisted 
of a chieftain in his castle on some fortified 
hill, with as many retainers as he could force 
to follow his fortunes. After the crusading 
movement, stirring whole populations, had 
caused the free intermingling of alien peoples, 
the feudal steadily gave way to the federa¬ 
tive, and this was an advance like that which 
marks the development of the tribal into the 
national. The great Christian States of the 
present time were thus gradually evolved. 
We can therefore adopt Guizot’s summary: 
“ On the whole, when we survey the state of 
society at the end of the crusades, we find that 
the movement tending to dissolution and dis- 


The Crusaders 


223 


persion, the movement of universal localization 
(if I may be allowed to use such an expression), 
had ceased, and had been succeeded by a 
movement in the contrary direction, a move¬ 
ment of centralization.” 


/ 




THE YOUNG CRUSADERS 



















“Our feet are standing 

Within thy gates, O Jerusalem.”—Ps. 122 : 2. 


XI 


THE YOUNG CRUSADERS 

What multitudes have visited Jerusalem 
and the Holy Land during the different ages! 
The most marvelous movement in this direc¬ 
tion was that of the successive crusades from 
the close of the eleventh century to the end of 
the thirteenth. All Europe rallied again and 
again to rescue the sepulcher of the Lord from 
Mohammedan infidels, who had come into pos¬ 
session by right of conquest, and who sub¬ 
jected Christian pilgrims to all manner of in¬ 
dignities. Army after army, led in turn by 
peasants and nobles and kings, was hurled 
against the Saracen power. For two hundred 
years wave after wave*of great popular up¬ 
risings rolled on and broke upon the shores of 
the promised land, until two millions of Eu¬ 
rope’s population are said to have perished. 
We are at this time to consider a mere eddy in 
the mighty tide, whose breakers, rapidly fol¬ 
lowing one another, were so sensibly felt along 
the whole coast of Palestine. 

There were Children’s Crusades, that were 
227 


228 The Trend of the Centuries 


part of a movement which we have seen to have 
been providential. These have been scarcely 
noticed by many historians. Gibbon, Gnizot, 
Milman, Neander, either pass them over in en¬ 
tire silence, or dismiss them with a line of 
mention, or with a brief foot-note. There is 
one writer, Gray, who has made a special study 
of the ancient chronicles, and who has wrought 
out an entire volume, giving the wondrous 
story in detail, and to this book we are in¬ 
debted for the fascinating facts connected with 
the lives of the young crusaders who seven 
hundred years ago were anxious to be able to 
say with the Psalmist: 

“ Our feet are standing 
Within thy gates, O Jerusalem.” 

In a beautiful valley of France, watered by 
a small river, was born, about the year 1200, a 
boy named Stephen.^ He tended the flocks of 
his father who was a peasant. When he was 
about twelve years old he went to a neighbor¬ 
ing city to witness a religious procession, got¬ 
ten up to rouse a fresh interest in the Holy 
Land; for four of the seven great crusades 
had occurred without accomplishing the de¬ 
sired deliverance for Jerusalem. Pathetic ad¬ 
dresses were made, plaintive hymns were 
chanted, solemn prayers were offered, and 


The Young Crusaders 229 

crosses were draped in black. A deep impres¬ 
sion was made upon the boy Stephen who all 
his childhood had heard the touching tales of 
returning pilgrims. Alone with the sheep in 
country solitude, he dwelt upon the theme 
until his imagination kindled and he had his 
boyish day-dreams of valiant deeds against the 
Mohammedans who wrongfully possessed the 
holy city. 

While in this excited mental condition, there 
appeared to him one day a disguised priest, who 
claimed to have just come from Palestine, and 
who talked with him at length, representing 
himself to be the Saviour, and straightway 
commissioned Stephen to preach a crusade to 
children, with the assurance that the young 
should succeed where armies and kings had 
failed. The lad, after this revelation, rushed 
from the field to tell his parents of his inter¬ 
view with the Lord. He could not be rea¬ 
soned out of his delusion in that credulous 
age, and he started on his mission. “For the 
last time we have heard of defeat,” he said, 
enthusiastically, in his appeals for volunteers ; 
“ hereafter shall children show mailed warriors 
and proud barons how invincible are youths 
when God leads them ! ” 

He repaired to a great national shrine five 
miles north of Paris, where crowds were con- 


230 The Trend of the Centuries 

stantly arriving and departing in honor of a 
saint who was said to be able to cure various 
distempers of body, mind and soul. It was a 
good base of operations, and as Stephen was 
precocious and eloquent, a genuine “ boy 
orator,” he had a wonderful influence over 
parents and children, over the young espe¬ 
cially, who were eager to go with so grand a 
leader for the rescue of the sepulcher from un¬ 
holy hands. Children’s bands at once began 
forming all over France. Boys of ten and 
even eight years canvassed their respective 
neighborhoods. They urged companions to 
enlist, and regiments were organized, which 
went marching through towns and villages, 
with the cross carried aloft as a banner, or 
worn on the breast as a badge. They sang 
and shouted, they waved wax candles that 
were lighted, and their watchword was that of 
their fathers, “ God wills it.” 

Hot only the children of the lower classes 
were caught by the contagion, but many 
youths of the nobility, seeing the processions 
sweep by their castle homes, came forth to join 
the glorious army. They had heard their par¬ 
ents tell many a story of knightly exploit, and 
they, too, would do chivalrous deeds. Some 
of them had lost their parents in previous 
crusades, but the armor of the dead, kept as a 


The Young Crusaders 231 

dear memorial, was a constant appeal to their 
young hearts and susceptible feelings. They 
would fight with those same weapons, or sleep 
with their fathers in the dust of the Holy 
Land. 

Some enlisted from unworthy motives, to 
get away from the restraints of home, but 
most were actuated by pious impulses. Of 
tender years, they responded readily to the 
call which they honestly thought came from 
the Master who so loved children. Girls 
helped to swell the ranks. Adults, and even 
the aged, listened to the fervid appeals of 
youth at the crossroads and at public places, 
and united their fortunes with those of the 
children. Yile characters to some extent at¬ 
tached themselves to the popular cause. But 
most of the recruits were boys twelve years 
old and upwards. 

The excitement grew till the king, by advice 
of the University of Paris, endeavored to stem 
the swelling tide. The more faithful of the 
clergy tried to check the growing delusion, 
but to no purpose. Parents, who were not 
carried away by the frenzy, exerted them¬ 
selves to stop the movement. But entreaties 
and commands, bolts and bars, were of no avail. 
The young would break out and steal away 
from distressed fathers and mothers who 


232 The Trend of the Centuries 

seemed powerless to control their own chil¬ 
dren when like a mighty flood a triumphal 
procession rolled by the. door with song and 
shout. 

The numerous bands scattered over the coun¬ 
try now only awaited orders from headquarters, 
from the commander-in-chief, Stephen, to as¬ 
semble at some designated place, preparatory 
to proceeding as a united army to the scene of 
an easy conquest across the blue Mediterranean. 
Their eager desire was to stand within the gates 
of Jerusalem, and they seemed to have prophecy 
on their side, for Zechariah had predicted, “ And 
the streets of the city shall be full of boys and 
girls playing in the streets thereof.” 

Meanwhile the infection, or epidemic, ex¬ 
tended to Germany, where it culminated 
sooner than in France. Nicholas, a lad of 
twelve years, encouraged by an ambitious 
parent, led out in the movement. His rendez¬ 
vous was Cologne, which, like the French 
shrine, was a German religious center, where 
the three skulls of the Magi, with miraculous 
qualities, were claimed and are still said to 
repose, and where accordingly worshipers 
gathered from all quarters. To these Nich¬ 
olas proclaimed the new crusade by children. 
He, too, had a supernatural attestation, as he 
was tending sheep in the field. Probably 


The Young Crusaders 233 

impressed by the emperor Constantine’s oft- 
told vision, he saw, or imagined that he saw, 
in the sky a blazing cross, which was ecclesias¬ 
tically pronounced a pledge of victory in the 
holy war. He made many converts from the 
crowds of pilgrims coming and going, and 
soon had youthful lieutenants gathering re¬ 
cruits through a wide territory, until, on a 
summer day in 1212, he had twenty thousand 
young crusaders ready to do his bidding. The 
hour for parting, perhaps forever, came, and 
the separations between parents and children 
were heartrending. 

The youthful warriors took up their march 
for the Holy Land. They advanced singing 
along the picturesque Rhine. They carried 
no weapons except faith and prayer. They 
unfurled to the breeze no flag except the cross. 
They trudged along with proud hearts and 
bounding spirits, and as “ tramp, tramp, tramp 
the boys were marching,” they compared ex¬ 
periences, and recalled their homes in cottage 
and in palace. They moved on to harder and 
harder experiences. They plunged into dark 
forests, where roamed wolves and bears and 
other wild beasts. They slept in barns, and 
outdoors, under the trees and on river-banks, 
they who had been accustomed to close their 
eyes under the roof of home, sw eet home, 


234 The Trend of the Centuries 

though it were ever so humble. But as the 
Son of man had not where to lay his head, 
they were willing to follow his example in 
lying down to rest wherever they might be 
when the night came on. 

Their course lay through Switzerland, and 
they came to the Alps, whose cloud and snow¬ 
capped heights had to be crossed; but like 
Hannibal before, like Napoleon after their 
day, they did not waver,—those of them who 
still remained, for their number had been 
sadly diminished. Some had been drowned in 
fording bridgeless streams. Others had been 
seized and devoured by savage animals. Still 
others, after subsisting on berries and shrubs 
in the scarcity of better food, had perished 
from hunger by the wayside. Whole groups, 
had retraced their steps as best they could to 
the comforts they had left. 

Half of the original army, however, bravely 
began the ascent of the everlasting moun¬ 
tains. They threaded their way along primi¬ 
tive bridle-paths by foaming torrents. They 
traversed snowy crags with bleeding feet. 
Some of them went whirling to their death 
over precipices, along whose narrow ledges 
they endeavored to creep. Others sank down 
in despair, and died in the gorges and by the 
glaciers, and their bodies were left unburied 


The Young Crusaders 235 

on the frozen ground. But after much hard¬ 
ship, the young crusaders who still survived 
reached the summit, and rejoiced as they looked 
down on green and fruitful valleys with silver 
streams far below. They pushed on for the 
sunny plains of Italy, where, however, they 
had as sad experiences as before. Many of 
them were made slaves, and some of the girls 
worse than slaves, by the Italians who had no 
dealings with the Germans, for the two nations 
were at war. 

In due time Genoa and the sea burst upon 
the view, and the children were delighted, for 
they had been assured by their leader that the 
Mediterranean was to divide, like the Bed Sea 
in Biblical history, and give them passage by 
dry land to Palestine. But when the seven 
thousand survivors, out of the first twenty 
thousand, had been disappointed in the failure 
of the waters to separate, and when the curi¬ 
osity of the city had been satisfied by the 
marching of the young crusaders through the 
streets, they were compelled, like Dickens’ poor 
Joe, to “move on,” as so many hungry mouths 
of moneyless strangers could not long be con¬ 
veniently fed, and especially since they were 
children of the then hated Germans. On only 
one condition could they remain, and that was 
that they would abandon their impracticable 


236 The Trend of the Centuries 

project, forever forsake their native land, and 
cast in their lot with the Genoese. Many of 
them, thoroughly discouraged, did settle down 
in Genoa, where they afterward rose to wealth 
and distinction, founding some of the great 
families that became prominent in the repub¬ 
lic; and many a modern Genoese, we are 
told, traces “his ancestry back to some boy 
who, born by the Rhine, had been led by a 
mighty delusion to find a new home by the 
Mediterranean.” 

And yet most of the crusaders clung to 
their hope of seeing Palestine, and they strug¬ 
gled on to Pisa of leaning tower fame, and 
there two shiploads sailed for the Holy Land. 
But it is not known whether they ever reached 
that country. No “ ships passing in the night ” 
brought any tidings of their fate. Those who 
did not embark from Pisa renewed the jour¬ 
ney overland, and we hear of a remnant of 
them arriving at Rome, where the Pope ab¬ 
solved them from their vows till they had 
come to maturer years, and as many of them 
as could made their way back, separately and 
in straggling bands, to the German homes 
they had left with such sincere but visionary 
ideas only a few months before. Thus did the 
army of twenty thousand young crusaders, 
under the lead of Nicholas, melt away with- 


The Young Crusaders 237 

out realizing that desire of their hearts to 
stand within the gates of Jerusalem. 

The fortunes of a second army, equal in 
number to that of Nicholas, and pursuing, 
under a leader whose name is unknown, a 
different course over the Alps, were also dis¬ 
astrous in the end. How many childless, or 
at least broken homes, those twenty thousand 
other boys (and girls) must have made ! They, 
too, had at the outset bright anticipations of 
triumph on the soil once trodden by the Lord 
and his disciples. They also drew throngs of 
spectators all along the route. In numerous 
skiffs they sailed the entire length of the 
charming Lake of Lucerne, and it must have 
seemed like a fairy scene as they sang their 
songs and waved their banners, while they 
glided over the magnificent sheet of water, 
and called one another’s attention to Pilatus 
and the Rigi, those towering mountains which 
never witnessed gladder excursionists. 

Not so romantic was their ascent of the 
Alps. They groped through gloomy defiles. 
They climbed along shelving rocks at dizzy 
heights, with the sound of thundering cata¬ 
racts filling their ears. They crossed fathom¬ 
less abysses by bridges whose narrowness 
would have made fathers and mothers shud¬ 
der, had their children’s peril been known. 


238 The Trend of the Centuries 

It is not strange that many of this second 
crusading army lay down to die amid Alpine 
terrors, their sobs of grief unassuaged by pa¬ 
rental tenderness, and terminating in a silence 
broken only, it has been said, by the “ sighing 
of the wind through the fir-trees,” while “ no 
monument was reared, except the wild flowers, 
which, when spring came again, were nurtured 
by their dust.” Their only winding-sheet was 
the white Alpine snow. 

Those who resisted and survived such hor¬ 
rors descended through Italy, on the south¬ 
eastern coast of which there were enough to 
fill several ships. They sailed away for Pales¬ 
tine, but were never heard from. We could 
almost believe the little fleet, crowded with 
boys and girls, to have been so many phantom 
ships, so unreal does it all seem, while neverthe¬ 
less it is sober history, too sober, too terribly mel¬ 
ancholy, as we think of the possible and proba¬ 
ble fate of those children by shipwreck or in 
slavery. There is one consolation: as they 
were bound for Jerusalem, with honest though 
mistaken motives, we cannot doubt that they 
eventually reached the desired haven of the 
Hew Jerusalem to meet the Saviour of chil¬ 
dren. Some homes were made happy again 
by returning crusaders, and more than one 
child who had gone on this famous crusade 


The Young Crusaders 239 

became a parent to tell his children the won¬ 
drous tale. But most watched and waited in 
vain for the return of those who had gone, 
since, when their pilgrimage was ended, their 
feet were standing within the holy city 
above, within the gates of that upper Jeru¬ 
salem. 

The French enterprise, which already has 
been sketched in part, and which originated 
the double German movement, remains to be 
traced to its more slow conclusion. The boy 
Stephen, though commencing first, did not get 
his young crusaders together as soon as Nich¬ 
olas, or as soon as that other nameless leader, 
each of whom quickly assembled his twenty 
thousand. But all France was astir, and when 
the child tribes did gather, there was an army 
of thirty thousand, mostly of boys, though 
there were some girls, and a few adults of 
both sexes. 

They had no Alps and no hostile country to 
traverse, but from a point on the coast of their 
own land they were to find a way opened to 
them through the sea to the Holy Land. 
Their march was to be through sunny fields 
and friendly villages directly to the port of 
Marseilles. Perhaps their most painful experi¬ 
ence was the parting with weeping parents. 
But there was the enthusiasm of numbers, and 


240 The Trend of the Centuries 

so the thirty thousand set off with inspiring 
music and flying colors. There was more of 
pomp than with the Germans. Stephen him¬ 
self rode in a magnificent chariot, under a rich 
canopy of brilliant hues. He had a body-guard 
of youths of noble birth, who were finely uni¬ 
formed, and armed with glistening lances and 
spears, and who sat on prancing chargers gaily 
caparisoned. The rank and file of the youthful 
warriors walked, and many were “ the blistered 
feet and tearful eyes” before Marseilles was 
reached. Some of the younger and more 
ignorant at the sight of each new town in the 
line of march pathetically asked, “ Is that 
Jerusalem ? ” 

Glad indeed were all when they came in 
view of the cool, blue sea. There had been 
not a few desertions during the weary journey 
of three hundred miles under a blazing sun in 
the heat 'of midsummer. And when the 
ocean did not divide as the innocents had been 
taught to expect, when the breakers continued 
to dash upon the shore, when the vast expanse 
of water remained unbroken from day to day, 
many more lost heart and withdrew from the 
enterprise. Still, many remained faithful and 
confident. They gazed wistfully at the nu¬ 
merous vessels riding the harbor and anchored 
at the docks, and they wished they had the 


The Young Crusaders 241 

money to charter some of them for a voyage 
over the Mediterranean. 

Finally two wealthy merchants of the city, 
whose ships could be seen in almost every port 
of the navigable globe, seemed to take pity on 
the young crusaders who in childish innocence 
daily looked for the great rolling ocean to 
divide. The merchants moreover felt such an 
interest, they said, in the holy cause, that they 
offered free passage to Palestine to as many 
pilgrims as chose to go. For the love of God 
and without price, said those two liberal mer¬ 
chants, would they provide ships for all who 
desired to go. Their generosity, their benevo¬ 
lence, was praised by every one, and Marseilles 
was proud of such citizens. What rejoicing 
there was among the children ! “ This,” they 

said, “ was the way through the sea which God 
had meant! Was it not a miracle ? ” 

The morning for departure came, and the 
eager children were up bright and early, happy 
as they could be. They went to the churches 
for farewell services. They went down to the 
beach, about five thousand of them, and em¬ 
barked upon seven vessels, while intensely in¬ 
terested spectators lined the shore, and while 
tears were shed by loving parents and rela¬ 
tives. They sailed away, singing a hymn (Yeni, 
Creator Spiritus) whose solemn cadences rose 


242 The Trend of the Centuries 

and fell on the air, as if keeping time with the 
gentle undulations of the waves. From the 
cliffs the receding ships bearing out to sea 
were watched, till they became mere specks in 
the distant horizon, and at length faded out 
of sight. 

A year passed, and no word came from the 
little fleet. Two years took their flight, and 
still no news of the children who had sailed 
for the Holy Land with such fair hopes. 
Many were the anxious inquiries, but three 
years brought no tidings, and many a home 
of peasant and of prince in France mourned. 
All those children who had started but had 
withdrawn, were interested. The whole nation 
was stirred because of the not unlikely tragic 
fate of the young crusaders. Eighteen years 
came and went, and those who had gone, if 
living, would be children no longer. The boy 
of twelve would be a man of thirty. But 
probably all had gone down in the great deep. 
That was the conviction to which the public 
had settled down. The unexampled gener¬ 
osity of the two merchants had not resulted as 
had been anticipated. 

In the year 1230, when the five thousand 
children had been nearly forgotten, there ar¬ 
rived in Europe from Cairo in Egypt an aged 
priest, who had been one of those to sail with 


The Young Crusaders 243 

the young crusaders eighteen years before. 
All France, and the Continent, too, thrilled at 
the prospect of learning the facts; and a na¬ 
tion, and indeed all Europe, gave, as it were, 
breathless attention, as he narrated the story 
of the voyage. There had been smooth sail¬ 
ing for a while, the seven ships with their 
white sails lilte so many birds speeding before 
favorable breezes. They were caressed by 
gentle billows and rocked in the cradle of the 
deep, until their precious freightage of five 
thousand children were fast asleep, dreaming 
doubtless of the old homes, or of Jerusalem 
for which they were bound. The second day 
and night brought no mishap, but on the 
morning of the third day there arose a tem¬ 
pest which threatened every moment to en¬ 
gulf the boats. Huddled together, the chil¬ 
dren cried and prayed, and expected soon to 
go down into watery graves. An island, San 
Pietro, loomed up. Two of the ships were 
driving straight toward its rocks. They were 
certainly doomed to destruction. The passen¬ 
gers on the five vessels which w r ould pass the 
danger in safety, with anguish saw their young 
companions drifting on to sure death. The 
two ships struck, reeled and sank with fifteen 
hundred of the crusaders, whose shrieks and 
prayers availed not. 


244 The Trend of the Centuries 

The storm subsided, and the other five 
vessels floated onward, and spirits rose again, 
as Jerusalem after all seemed likely to be 
reached. But fond hopes were once more dis¬ 
appointed, as the thirty-five hundred surviving 
crusaders were sold into bondage. The two 
merchants who had so readily offered them a 
gratuitous passage turned out to be really 
slave-dealers, by whose orders the young 
crusaders were delivered to Mohammedan 
masters in various African cities, where they 
lived and died in slavery. Only a few of 
them ever reached the Holy Land, and they 
merely as captives, who were transported 
through Palestine clear to Bagdad on the 
Tigris. They had often sung of standing 
within the gates of Jerusalem, but right past 
or through the holy city they were hurried, 
past the Sea of Galilee of sacred memory, on 
to the far East, where eighteen of them suf¬ 
fered martyrdom rather than relinquish the 
Christian for the Moslem faith, and where 
the rest, though allowed to live, had to en¬ 
dure a bondage which terminated only with 
death. 

The young crusaders started out singing, 
but they had no songs in the foreign lands 
where they served cruel taskmasters, because 
of the treachery of two apparently benevolent 


245 


The Young Crusaders 

but really rascally merchants who, it is a 
comfort to know, in after years were hanged 
for another crime. On the lonely island 
which marked the shipwreck in the Mediter¬ 
ranean was erected a memorial church, very 
properly called the Church of the Holy Inno¬ 
cents, and there worship was sustained for 
centuries, while its ruins still speak of the 
young crusaders who were seeking Jerusalem 
and found it, only it was the heavenly Jeru¬ 
salem. 

How the zeal of those, concerning whom 
the truth is stranger than fiction, should stimu¬ 
late the young of to-day! And we do have 
youthful crusaders yet in countless numbers. 
We have only to instance the twenty-five 
millions who in the last century have been 
• organized into the great Sunday-school move¬ 
ment, and the three and a half millions who 
within a score of years have been banded to¬ 
gether under the Christian Endeavor standard, 
to say nothing of the millions gathered in 
Epworth Leagues, and of all those marshaled 
by the various denominations. And the en¬ 
couraging thing about all these different organi¬ 
zations of our youth is, that intelligence is com¬ 
bined with enthusiasm, and that the dominant 
thought is not so much of the Jerusalem down 
here below as of “Jerusalem the Golden,” 


246 The Trend of the Centuries 

which they are seeking over Alpine difficulties 
and stormy seas, and within whose gates they 
confidently expect some day to stand with 
everlasting songs upon their lips, after God’s 
purpose has been wrought out in their lives. 


JOHN WYCLIFFE THE MORNING 
STAR OF THE REFORMATION 


“Truth springeth out of the earth.”—Ps. 85 :11. 


XII 


JOHN WYCLIFFE THE MORNING STAR OF 
THE REFORMATION 

Bryant has said: 

“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again,— 

The eternal years of God are hers.” 

This strikes the key-note to the character of 
John Wycliffe, who has been called, “the 
morning star of the Reformation.” At a 
crisis in his wonderful career, when it seemed 
as if he were utterly overwhelmed, he gave 
utterance to this thrilling sentiment, “ I know 
that in the end truth will conquer.” He had 
faith in an overruling and conquering Provi¬ 
dence, and what he said will be verified to our 
minds by a consideration of the leading events 
in the life of this remarkable man. 

The conjectural year of his birth is 1324. 
He first saw the light in a small village of 
Yorkshire, England. There, amid hills and 
dales and woods and brooks, he lived as a 
country boy, till at about the age of seventeen 
he entered Oxford, where as many as thirty 
249 


250 The Trend of the Centuries 

thousand students were said to have been 
gathered, occasionally, at one time. There was 
not then a schoolhouse on every hill, and ac¬ 
cordingly the few universities were largely 
patronized even in Wy cliff e’s day, when, how¬ 
ever, the numbers at the colleges were con¬ 
siderably depleted because of the educational 
inducements held out by the monasteries. Of 
the reformer’s pursuit of knowledge at Ox¬ 
ford our information is slight. But we learn 
that a profound religious impression was made 
upon the young student by the Black Death, 
which in 1348, after ravaging all Europe, 
visited England, and swept half the population 
into their graves. When wives forsook hus¬ 
bands, and mothers children, when men’s 
hearts were failing them through fear, when 
more than half the clergy of Wycliffe’s own 
shire fell before the plague, it is not strange 
that he wrote a pamphlet in which he claimed 
that the day of judgment was at hand. He 
was deeply moved spiritually, and his talents 
were henceforth consecrated to the Lord. 

For ten years he prosecuted his studies at 
Oxford, and till nearly the close of his life he 
was connected with the great university as an 
instructor, becoming famous as the Evangelical 
Doctor, while at the same time three different 
parishes were favored with his pulpit ministra- 


251 


John Wycliffe 

tions, and his name will ever be associated with 
his third and last field, Lutterworth, which in 
connection with Oxford was the scene of his 
multiform labors, literary and religious. At 
Lutterworth still stands the church (with some 
necessary renovations) in which he preached 
more than five hundred years ago, a kind of 
monument to his memory, upon which might 
very properly be inscribed his motto, “ Truth 
will conquer.” 

First, Wycliffe as a Christian patriot will 
occupy our attention. Perhaps the most ig¬ 
nominious period of English history was dur¬ 
ing the reign of John, from whom had to 
be wrested by force Magna Charta, that great 
charter of constitutional liberty. Something 
over a century before Wycliffe was born, this 
king of inglorious memory had submitted to 
the humiliation of rendering up his kingdom 
to the Pope, and of receiving it back again in 
fief. He humbly presented tribute money to 
the papal legate, who first tossed it from him, 
in scorn, but who afterward very naturally 
picked it up again. The same monarch laid 
his crown at the feet of Pome’s proud am¬ 
bassador, who first actually kicked it from him 
in contempt, and who then graciously allowed 
the abject king to replace it on his head. Eng¬ 
land protested against this subjection to a 


2 The Trend of the Centuries 

foreign power, and soon refused the tribute 
demanded. It was a renewal of this demand 
in 1365, with a further requirement of the pay¬ 
ment of the arrears for years, which brought 
Wycliffe into public view, after he had passed 
the age of forty. 

He took sides with an indignant people. 
The British spirit was roused. Under the lead 
of Edward the Third and his son, the chivalrous 
Black Prince, it had won the laurels of Crecy 
and Poitiers, in the hundred years’ war with 
France, by reason of which England now 
stood at the head of European affairs, and 
therefore was not in a mood to submit tamely 
to a surrender of national independence. The 
popular indignation grew, till it found expres¬ 
sion in the Parliament of 1366, which, under 
the direction of the great reformer, its most 
prominent member, or at least its inspiring 
genius, gave forth the ringing decision, that 
“ the King, with all his subjects, should with 
all their force and power resist” the papal 
claim. Being challenged to defend the action 
of the nation’s legislators, Wycliffe did not 
hesitate to do so. Year after year he main¬ 
tained his position, saying at one time that 
England could not endure the continual drain 
Rome ward of her resources through eccle¬ 
siastical channels, “ though our realm had a 


253 


John Wycliffe 

large hill of gold.” The agitation was kept 
up, and was stirred to a white heat, when a 
papal nuncio with a train of servants and a 
half dozen horses came to press Borne’s de¬ 
mand. 

A conference to settle the questions at issue 
was called in 1374 at Bruges, and Wycliife 
was one of England’s commissioners. As he 
entered that town, which was then a commer¬ 
cial center, he may have heard the chimes of 
that belfry which was erected that very cen¬ 
tury, and which Longfellow has thus im¬ 
mortalized : 

“ In the ancient town of Bruges, 

In the quaint old Flemish city, 

As the evening shades descended, 

Low and loud and sweetly blended, 

Low at times and loud at times, 

And changing like a poet’s rhymes, 

Rang the beautiful wild chimes 
From the belfry in the market 
Of the ancient town of Bruges. ’ ’ 

But if our reformer was introduced to such 
sweet music, he also became acquainted with 
the ways that are dark of intriguing diplo¬ 
macy, and he had to return to his country dis¬ 
appointed, so far as any real concessions from 
the court on the Tiber were concerned. 

The contest was continued, till the Parlia¬ 
ment of 1376 once more voiced the national 


254 The Trend of the Centuries 

resistance to foreign encroachments—a Parlia¬ 
ment that was called Good and is still termed 
such in history, because its sentiments as 
molded by Wycliffe met with the approval of 
the people. But was the truth, the cause of 
freedom, to conquer ? Every effort was made 
to crush its most distinguished advocate in our 
hero who in 1377 was summoned for trial be¬ 
fore a convocation in St. Paul’s Cathedral, 
whither he was accompanied by that powerful 
protector, John of Gaunt, “ the time-honored 
Lancaster ” of Shakespearean fame, a son of 
the reigning sovereign. Would even such a 
friend be able to save Wy cliff e from deter¬ 
mined enemies ? The building was crowded, 
and when it was proposed that the reformer 
should be seated, the bishop objected, and in¬ 
sisted that the criminal should stand in so 
august a presence. From this arose a violent 
altercation, which terminated with Lancaster’s 
threat, “ I will pluck the bishop by the hair 
out of the church.” At once there was a 
tumult, in the midst of which Wy cliff e es¬ 
caped, and a subsequent mob was quelled only 
by royal command. 

With the death of Edward the Third and 
the accession of Richard the Second, and with 
Wycliffe’s advice to the new government to 
retain for its own use the treasures gathered 


John Wycliffe 255 

to be sent abroad, came a second attempt to 
crush him, in another trial to which he was 
summoned in Lambeth Palace. Thither he 
repaired in 1378, unaccompanied by Lancaster 
who was no longer influential in the changed 
court, but this time, as the reformer made his 
defense, the popular demonstrations in his 
favor were such that the Princess of Wales 
saw fit to order a dismissal of the case, and 
so he escaped with only a harmless reprimand. 

Thus at the peril of his life did the noble 
patriot withstand the slightest submission to a 
foreign ecclesiastical power. English liberty, 
and, remotely, American freedom, was at stake. 
Wycliffe’s sentiments were doubtless reflected 
by Lancaster, whom the greatest of dramatists 
makes to say: 

“ This land of such dear souls, this dear, dear land, 

Dear for her reputation through the world, 

Is now leas’d out, I die pronouncing it, 

Like to a tenement, or pelting farm. 

England, bound in with the triumphant sea, 

Whose rocky shore beats back the envious siege 
Of watery Neptune, is now bound in with shame, 

With ink blots, and rotten parchment bonds.’’ 

Would the time ever come when papal bulls 
and excommunications would be defied by 
British courage, when every vestige of vassal- 
age would be wiped out ? Yes, the truth was 
eventually to conquer, but it was not to be in 


256 The Trend of the Centuries 

Wycliffe’s day, nor till one hundred and fifty 
years after his death, when, under Henry the 
Eighth, England did finally break off the for¬ 
eign yoke which she had chafingly worn so 
long. The patriot reformer was right, when 
he said, “ I know that in the end truth will 
conquer.” Temporarily crushed to the ground, 
it “springeth out of the earth,” for “the 
eternal years of God are hers.” 

In the second place, as a religious reformer 
Wycliffe is deserving of study. In this re¬ 
spect he had a similar conflict with his oppo¬ 
nents. The conditions of the Church as well 
as of the State needed the attention of a mas¬ 
terly mind, and when the great papal schism 
occurred, by which Christendom had for 
half a century two popes who damned each 
other in true excommunicatory fashion, Wyc¬ 
liffe concluded that they were both right in 
their opinion of each other, and he decided to 
throw himself into the great work of positive 
religious reform. 

There is a constant tendency to deteriora¬ 
tion in religion. There was a period when 
monasteries (in their infancy) were excellent 
institutions. They stood a bulwark against 
barbarism, whose influx threatened the over¬ 
throw of Christianity. They were the con¬ 
servators of a Christian civilization. Origi- 


John WyclifFe 257 

nally, as another has said, “ the monastery 
seems to us a sweet and attractive retreat, pre¬ 
senting, with its holy quiet, disturbed only by 
the occasional chimes and the soft, subdued 
strains of the morning and evening hymn, a 
striking contrast to the neighboring castle, 
with its noise and its often warlike tumult.” 
This was all very beautiful, but, with the ac¬ 
cumulation of wealth and with splendid en¬ 
dowments, there came corruption and decay. 
The monks lived in ease and luxury, and 
neglected their spiritual duties, and they 
let the people perish for lack of knowledge. 

It was to remedy this state of affairs that a 
century before Wycliffe the Mendicants came 
into existence, the Franciscans and Dominicans, 
who, barefoot and clad in coarse woolen gowns, 
went every where preaching the Word, begging 
as they went to supply their daily needs. 
They did a vast amount of good, till they, too, 
as orders, became rich. As their riches in¬ 
creased they degenerated, and they became 
more anxious to grant absolution for a proper 
monetary consideration than to preach the gos¬ 
pel. “ These friars have piled up their man¬ 
sions to a royal altitude,” complained a con¬ 
temporary, Matthew Paris; “ they beset the 
dying bed of the noble and the wealthy in order 
to extort secret bequests from the fears of guilt 


258 The Trend of the Centuries 

and superstition.” Chaucer, the father of Eng¬ 
lish poetry, as his friend Wycliffe was'of Eng¬ 
lish prose, said in modern phrase (for English 
then is hardly intelligible to the reader now): 

‘ ‘ Therefore instead of weeping and prayers, 

Men might give silver to the poor friars. ’ ’ 

The Mendicants, like the monks before them, 
had degenerated. The masses were no longer 
being saved, they w T ere only being shorn by 
professional beggars, they were only being 
fleeced by hirelings who made a show of pov¬ 
erty and piety, but who reveled in luxury and 
vice. 

To take the place of these unworthy charac¬ 
ters, Wycliffe sent forth his “Poor Priests,” 
or, as we would say, his lay workers, who were 
to go like the Mendicants in bare feet and in 
simple clothing, but who were to go in a dif¬ 
ferent spirit; not to hear confessions and to 
receive fees, but to preach the gospel and to 
receive only their living. They were not, such 
was the instruction of the reformer, to imitate 
those whom, says Blackburn, “ we see, after 
the service, sitting in ale-houses, or at the 
gambling-tables, or hasting off with their 
hounds. After sermon, visit the sick, the aged, 
the poor, the little children, and help them as 
you can.” They were, in short, to carry the 


John Wycliffe 259 

pure gospel to the neglected masses. It was a 
movement, which, like the Wesleyan, much 
later, created a great furor. 

The complaint rose long and loud against 
this preaching, not only in the churches, said 
a shocked archbishop, but “ in public squares, 
and other profane places,” and that, too, “ with¬ 
out any episcopal or papal authorization.” 
The height of sacrilege was reached when 
Wyclilfe attacked the doctrine of transubstanti- 
ation, that the bread and wine became the very 
flesh and blood of Christ. While presenting 
his views on this subject in a lecture at Ox¬ 
ford, he was interrupted by the university au¬ 
thorities, who had hastily conferred together, 
and had decided that he must desist. He was 
thus silenced in 1381, where he had so long 
been an honored professor. He was grieved 
to be cut off from the pleasant associations of 
a lifetime (for he was now within three years 
of his death), but he did not falter. As he re¬ 
tired from the classic shades to quiet Lutter¬ 
worth, he uttered the sentence which we have 
taken as his motto, “ I know that in the end 
the truth will conquer.” 

In that faith he redoubled his zeal against 
the Mendicants. But most prejudicial to his 
cause at this time was the unfortunate uprising 
of the peasants, who had caught some of his 


260 The Trend of the Centuries 


ideas of liberty, but who had not imbibed his 
spirit of self-control, and of orderly procedure, 
and of obedience to law. We sometimes sup¬ 
pose communism to be of recent origin and 
growth, but there in England five hundred 
years ago a hundred thousand communists, 
bearing such names as Wat Tyler and Jack 
Straw arid Tom Miller, marched to the popu¬ 
lar rhyme as enunciated by their mad leader, 
John Ball: 

“ When Adam delved and Eve span, 

Who was then the gentleman ? ’ ’ 

On to London they advanced, with hatred for 
all classes except their own, and they made a 
vigorous use of the torch, till they were sup¬ 
pressed by disciplined troops. Injustice and 
wrong they undoubtedly had suffered, but they 
did what only injured their own cause when 
they rose in rebellion and riot. They thus in¬ 
creased the public disapprobation of Wycliffe, 
the great advocate of freedom, but of a liberty 
which did not mean license. This revolt so 
augmented the unpopularity of the reformer 
that the time seemed ripe for his final destruc¬ 
tion. 

For the third time he was summoned to 
London, and the synod of ecclesiastics was 
about to give shape to their condemnation, 
when an earthquake suddenly shook the whole 


John Wycliffe 261 

city. The assembly was nearly dissolved in 
a panic at what seemed an evil omen, when 
the archbishop adroitly pacified his frightened 
minions by the ingenious deliverance, “ As in 
the interior of the earth there are enclosed 
foul airs and winds which break out in earth¬ 
quakes, so that the earth is purged of them, 
though not without great violence, even so 
there have been many heresies hitherto shut 
up in the hearts of the unbelieving, but by the 
condemnation thereof the kingdom has been 
purged, though not without trouble and great 
agitation..” The reformer was not slow to turn 
the natural phenomenon, the seismic disturb¬ 
ance, to his advantage. “ The earth cries out,” 
he declared, “ against the wrong,” and by his 
frequent references to the incident he managed 
to affix to the council for all time the name of 
“The Earthquake Synod.” The civil power 
now also was arrayed, so far as possible, 
against his evangelistic laborers, and he him¬ 
self was soon tried again at Oxford; but still 
he was not silenced. 

Then came a severe illness, probably a para¬ 
lytic stroke, from which he was not expected 
to recover. Into what was supposed to be his 
death-chamber a delegation of monks gained 
entrance to get from his dying lips a recanta¬ 
tion. He remained silent for a little, then 


262 The Trend of the Centuries 

asked to he lifted up in his bed, and his visitors 
eagerly listened to hear him retract, when to 
their astonishment and confusion, from his 
raised pillow and with a commanding look, he 
said with a decided energy, “ I shall not die, 
but live, and declare the evil deeds of the 
friars.” He was as good as his word. 

Truth was yet to conquer, for he recovered 
to complete with able assistants his greatest 
work, the translation of the entire Bible into 
English from the Latin Yulgate. This was 
brought out in the Lutterworth parish in 1382, 
the first version of the Holy Scriptures in the 
vernacular of his countrymen, and the basis of 
all subsequent English versions. His preach¬ 
ers might die, but if he could give England 
the ever-living Word, he knew success was as¬ 
sured. To be sure, a Roman chronicler of that 
age mourns because the Bible was thus “laid 
open to the laity, and to women who can 
read,” to quote his own language, “ and in this 
way the gospel pearl is cast abroad and trod¬ 
den under foot of swine.” But the swinish 
people and women appreciated the pearl, never¬ 
theless. They would pay as high as two hun¬ 
dred dollars for a single manuscript copy of 
the sacred books, there being as yet no print¬ 
ing press to multiply copies. A farmer would 
give a load of hay for a few leaves of the Hew 


John Wycliffe 263 

Testament. Little circles were organized for 
the common reading at night of the precious 
volume. There were those who memorized 
portions of the contents, and who repeated 
what they had learned to delighted friends 
and relatives. 

Wycliffe, having now inaugurated his two 
great enterprises of having the gospel carried 
to the masses, and of making God’s own 
Word accessible to the common people, was 
ready to depart and be with Christ, and the 
end soon came. Near the close of 1384 he 
was administering the sacrament in his Lutter¬ 
worth church, when there came the second 
and fatal stroke of paralysis, and on the last 
day of the year he expired. He fell at his 
post, at the very altar, “ struck by the horrible 
judgment of God,” said a papal writer (Wal- 
singham); “ a beautiful ending of a beautiful 
life,” says the well-known Protestant historian 
(Daubigne) of the Reformation. 

Had the truth conquered ? Nay, there fol¬ 
lowed a reaction, when the Wycliffites or 
Lollards, as they were called, were imprisoned 
and burned and expatriated. But, after all, a 
hidden remnant survived and from them de¬ 
veloped the great Reformation of the sixteenth 
century, reappearing first in the Hussite move¬ 
ment, and then in the Lutheran. There is 


264 The Trend of the Centuries 

something suggestive in the picture said to be 
drawn on a leaf of an ancient prayer-book : at 
the top of the page Wycliffe is represented as 
striking a spark, which Huss below is fanning 
into a flame, while, underneath both, Luther is 
waving a lighted torch. The truth did even¬ 
tually conquer after this fashion. 

After Wy cliff e’s death there came apparent 
disaster. So mighty was the reaction that in 
1428, forty-four years after he had been in his 
grave, his bones, by order of the hierarchy, 
were disinterred, burned, and the ashes were 
flung into the Swift, the stream flowing 
through Lutterworth. “ Thus,” said Thomas 
Fuller, the old historian, who did not believe 
the truth was conquered even then, “this 
brook did convey his ashes into Avon, Avon 
into Severn, Severn into the narrow sea, and 
this into the wide ocean. And so the ashes of 
Wy cliff e are the emblem of his doctrine, which 
is now dispersed all the world over.” The 
same thought is expressed by Wordsworth in 
the immortal lines: 

“ As thou these ashes, little brook, wilt bear 
Into the Avon—Avon to the tide 
Of Severn—Severn to the narrow seas — 

Into main ocean they,—this deed accurst, 

An emblem yields to friends and enemies, 

How the bold teacher’s doctrine, sanctified 

By truth, shall spread throughout the world dispersed.” 


John WyclifFe 265 

So it even is. Constitutional freedom, the 
propagation of the gospel by word of mouth 
and by the circulated Bible, the cause of civil 
and religious liberty, for which Wycliffe lived 
and died and rose again in his exhumed and 
scattered dust—the progress of these eternal 
principles of truth has been marvelous. Let 
us see to it that the glorious triumph shall roll 
on, until there is the completed victory in the 
universal sway of pure and undefiled religion. 
“ I know that in the end truth will conquer; ” 
“ Truth springeth out of the earth; ” 

“Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again, — 

The eternal years of God are hers.” 

Thus have said most truly poet and psalmist 
and reformer, giving us the Scriptural two or 
three witnesses whereby a matter is estab¬ 
lished. 


THE REFORMATION 


“ That ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet 
be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as 
from us, as that the day of the Lord is now present; let no 
man beguile you in any wise : for it will not be, except the 
falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed, 
the son of perdition, he that opposeth and exalteth himself 
against all that is called God or that is worshipped ; so that 
he sitteth in the temple of God, setting himself forth as 
God.”— 2 Thess. 2: 2-4. 


XIII 


THE REFORMATION 

At the outset the organization of Christian 
churches was very simple. In different com¬ 
munities, believers came together in each lo¬ 
cality from a mutual affinity. The only re¬ 
lation between the little companies in the 
various towns and cities was that of spiritual 
fellowship. Yery naturally, the churches in 
the larger places were looked up to, and they 
gradually came to exert an influence which 
the bodies at less important points did not 
have. Alexandria, Antioch and Rome, of 
metropolitan dimensions, were correspondingly 
influential religiously. By and by it was 
recognized that the capital of the whole em¬ 
pire, the Eternal City on the Tiber, was the 
center of authority for civilians, and why 
should it not be for Christians ? Repeatedly 
something like this would occur: a theological 
controversy would spring up, and the parties 
to it in casting about for an arbitrator would 
think first of Rome. Both would pay the 

269 


270 The Trend of the Centuries 

most deferential respect to the church there, 
each would see which could say the hand¬ 
somest things in her favor, in the hope of 
securing each her favorable decision. What 
was thus accorded to Rome by way of exagger¬ 
ated compliment was little by little claimed as 
a right. 

Princes, too, sought her favors, knowing the 
esteem and reverence in which she was held 
by the masses. It was worth something to 
secure such a powerful ally, whose dominion 
was limited to no single country, but was ex¬ 
tended over all Europe. By such a process, 
Rome after long ages came to occupy her posi¬ 
tion as supreme over Church and State. But 
this accession of strength, this possession of 
augmented power, was not the worst feature. 
Christianity, with the growth of the hier¬ 
archical spirit, became more and more secular, 
and less and less spiritual. Religion became 
increasingly a matter of forms and ceremonies. 
Pilgrimages to holy places and bodily scourg- 
ings became of great merit, and the two could 
be combined by going barefoot in the snow to 
some sacred shrine. 

Of course, these places could not be kept up 
without persons to superintend, without priests, 
and these officials had to be supported. There 
were the most ingenious devices for obtaining 


The Reformation 


271 


money. An alleged fragment of Noah’s ark 
would be displayed, or a portion of the original 
cross, or a feather from the wing of an arch¬ 
angel, or some other relic. At a chapel in 
Saxony, there was an image of the Virgin and 
the divine Child, who would bow very gra¬ 
ciously if the offering were sufficiently large, 
but who would avert the face with manifest 
displeasure if the gift were small. When the 
Reformation set in, and the ungodly police 
examined into the matter, it was ascertained 
that there were suspicious wires and pulleys 
which would work the mechanical contrivance 
to perfection. 

But the pilgrimages and the flagellations 
and the offerings went on for centuries. It 
was a happy thought of Pope Boniface VIII 
to propose in the year 1300 a pilgrimage to 
Rome at the beginning of every century, each 
toiling pilgrim who should perform the meri¬ 
torious act to receive entire forgiveness, com¬ 
plete absolution, from him who occupied the 
pontifical throne. Of course each one was 
expected to bring some fitting testimonial of 
value received, and as two hundred thousand 
pilgrims from every part of Europe are said to 
have gone to Rome in a single month during 
the year 1300, Boniface was pleased with the 
success of his project. It was so nice a thing 


272 The Trend of the Centuries 

that the jubilee was put at intervals of fifty 
years. That worked so well that the time 
was shortened to a generation, to thirty-three 
years, and then to twenty-five, a quarter- 
centennial. Finally, it was felt that the dear 
people should be allowed to contribute their 
pence every year, and each at his home. 

Proper agents were, therefore, sent out, to go 
everywhere with papal indulgences. Murder 
could be pardoned for a certain consideration; 
incest and every other crime had its price. 
Purgatory was invented to increase the reve¬ 
nues, for souls could be rescued from that for 
a certain amount of money. There were paint¬ 
ings which pictured persons writhing in the 
flames, and these still exist in the old countries, 
making infidels now, furnishing stock for such 
lecturers as Ingersoll, but anciently stirring the 
sympathies of the superstitious. It was not 
infrequent to make appeals in behalf of those 
who were suffering the torments of the damned. 
Tetzel, who roused Luther and precipitated the 
Reformation, used these words in an address: 
“ Hearken to your departed parents, who cry 
to you from the bottomless abyss: 4 We are 
enduring horrible torment! a small alms would 
deliver us; you can give it, and you will not! ’ ” 
Thus it was that the priests extorted money 
from ignorant people, assuring them gravely 


The Reformation 273 

that it brought forgiveness to the living and 
dead alike. 

When we can curb our indignation at such 
infamy, we are rather pleased at the story 
which Froude, on the authority of a Spanish 
novelist, relates of a man who got the better 
of a lying priest. He put a shilling in the 
plate in behalf of a deceased acquaintance, and 
then asked, “ Is my friend’s soul out ? ” The 
answer was in the affirmative. “ Quite sure ? ” 
was the further inquiry. There was not a 
doubt as to the happy deliverance, whereupon 
came the reply, “Very well, if he is out of 
purgatory, they will not put him in again: it 
is a bad shilling! ” 

Such were the abominations which gave rise 
to the Reformation, and they were inexcusable. 
What if St. Peter’s, which was more than a 
century in building, and which has cost sixty 
million dollars, and which is the admiration of 
every visitor to Rome to-day, did need funds! 
What if Michael Angelo did take the Par¬ 
thenon which was erected before Christ, and 
“ suspend it in midair ” in the wondrous dome 
of the great cathedral! What if this noble 
structure did need completing! That was no 
reason why people should have been practically 
encouraged to sin by the promise of pardon on 
payment of a specified sum. Under such cir- 


274 The Trend of the Centuries 

cumstances, it is not strange that the priest¬ 
hood came to possess from a third to a half 
and sometimes two-thirds of the land in the 
various countries of Europe. Is it any wonder, 
with such inducements to sin, that immorality 
and corruption so largely reigned ? 

There were bright and shining examples of 
piety; there were (and are) man} 7- good Cath¬ 
olics, eminent saints indeed, whom we are all 
glad to canonize; but they were in the mi¬ 
nority. The monasteries sometimes became 
brothels, and when Luther, renouncing celi¬ 
bacy, married an escaped nun, and when it 
was said that Antichrist would be the fruit of 
the unlawful union, there was such a state of 
affairs in the very convents, that Erasmus 
could say, “ If monk and nun produce Anti¬ 
christ, there must have been legions of Anti¬ 
christs these many years.” The impurity of 
the religious orders was the common talk for 
a long time. Some of the popes themselves 
were notorious debauchees. 

Pope Innocent VIII, among others, was not 
at all innocent, as his name would imply, and 
Dante, the matchless poet, very properly con¬ 
signed several such to hell, where they be¬ 
longed. There was scarcely a crime which 
was not attached to the papal chair. Not long 
preceding the Deformation the profligate Alex- 


The Reformation 


2 75 

ander Borgia, though shamelessly unfit to be 
the ecclesiastical head of the religious world, 
came to the position by bribing the cardinals, 
“four mules, laden with silver,” says the his¬ 
torian, being publicly driven to the palace of 
the most influential cardinal. And his son, 
Caesar Borgia, whom he highly honored, was 
such a monster of depravity as to stab to death 
a courtier who sought refuge under the pontif¬ 
ical robe. At the very feet of his father, he 
committed this red-handed murder, “and the 
blood of the victim spurted in the pontiff’s 
face.” Such were the doings in the Church 
itself, which notwithstanding its name was 
neither holy nor Catholic, even as afterward 
it could be said of the “ Holy Roman Empire,” 
that it was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an 
empire. Yerily, there had been a “falling 
away ” since the time of the apostles. 

To one who asked Luther sneeringly where 
the Church was before his movement, the 
acute German replied, “ Where was your face 
this morning before you washed it ? ” He rec¬ 
ognized that there were true and genuine 
Christians in the Church, and it was his to 
bring them out, to protest against the obscu¬ 
ration of the simple original gospel. Protes¬ 
tantism was. the old Church with the impuri¬ 
ties washed away, and the beneficial influences 


276 The Trend of the Centuries 

of this great reformatory movement can hardly 
be overestimated, and that, too, not only relig¬ 
iously but secularly. 

It was the emancipation of the human mind 
from priestly thraldom. It was associated 
with all that is glorious in history. It was 
the handmaid of letters, and is yet, as is not 
the Romanism which to-day lists among the 
prohibited authors Hallam, Hume and Gib¬ 
bon, Spinoza, Locke and Bacon, and also the 
grand old blind poet, Milton. Indeed, the in¬ 
dex prohibitory and expurgatory rules out 
much of our best literature. Kor has the 
hierarchy been more favorable to science, for, 
from the time of Galileo who was persecuted 
and condemned for insisting that the world 
did move, this reactionary power has seemed 
determined to keep the world from moving in 
any true sense. Our best civilization is the 
product of Protestantism, which has ever stood 
for education and enlightenment, as Catholi¬ 
cism has not, for in Protestant Europe the gen¬ 
eral intelligence averages much higher than in 
Catholic Europe, as every informed person will 
admit. Where Rome holds sway, illiteracy is 
confessedly and frightfully prevalent. Most 
true are Macaulay’s striking words, when he 
draws his historic comparison: “ The loveliest 
and most fertile provinces of Europe,” he says, 


The Reformation 


2 77 

in speaking of Romanism, “ have, under her 
rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servi¬ 
tude, and in intellectual torpor, while Protes¬ 
tant countries, once proverbial for sterility 
and barbarism, have been turned by skill and 
industry into gardens, and can boast of a long 
list of heroes and statesmen, philosophers and 
poets.” Such are the facts as written by 
the historian, and we feel that God must 
have been in the movement which has so 
manifestly operated for the betterment of 
mankind. 

The Reformation has also given us the bless¬ 
ing of civil liberty. We are familiar with 
Rome’s claim to temporal as well as spiritual 
sovereignty, and we know how detrimental 
this has been to political freedom. We can 
never forget how one of the greatest of Eng¬ 
lish monarchs, Henry II, did penance at the 
tomb of Becket, and there submitted meekly 
to a flogging administered by monks. We 
have read of the German emperor humbly 
holding the stirrup for Pope Gregory VII to 
mount his animal, while the same renowned 
Hildebrand, as he is more generally called, 
made Henry IV of Germany wait three days 
in the garb of a penitent and in the snow, be¬ 
fore admitting him to the castle at Canossa; 
a circumstance which made Bismarck say a few 


278 The Trend of the Centuries 

years ago, in his conflict with the Jesuits, that 
Germany was not going to Canossa again. As 
we value our civil liberty should we be grate¬ 
ful to God for the Reformation. 

We should likewise remember its distinctly 
religious significance. A priesthood had been 
put between the soul and its God, and the 
teaching of the Church had taken the place of 
that of the Scriptures. Luther gave the Bible 
to the world, from which it had long been 
kept. He gave his beloved Germans the Word 
of God in the vernacular, in their own lan¬ 
guage. It cost him much labor, but he pre¬ 
pared a version which has been that of the 
fatherland ever since, though it has recently 
undergone a revision. While translating the 
inspired pages occurred that episode of hurl¬ 
ing his inkstand at the devil whom he thought 
he saw, and the black spot then made on the 
wall long remained. Whether the ink on that 
occasion did good service or not against the 
evil one, certain it is that from that day 
printer’s ink in the circulation of the Scrip¬ 
tures round the globe has been putting Satan 
to flight. When we think of the mental stim¬ 
ulus, the intellectual uplift, which the reading 
of the Bible everywhere gives, to say nothing 
of the more spiritual results, we can in some 
measure begin to appreciate the benefits of 


The Reformation 


279 

the Reformation, which unchained God’s Word, 
and gave it to the people. 

The special truth of justification by faith is 
that for which, perhaps, we should be most 
thankful to a good Providence working in 
the Protestant movement of the sixteenth 
century. There has ever been a painful 
effort on the part of the human to merit 
eternal bliss. You may recollect what Gib¬ 
bon says of Hermit John, who lived in the 
fourth century. In a mountain in Egypt the 
recluse had a cell, in which he remained for 
fifty years without ever opening the door, 
without companionship, without any food pre¬ 
pared by fire or culinary process. There for 
five days in the week he prayed and medi¬ 
tated, only on Saturdays and Sundays giving 
audience through a small window to the 
crowds of pilgrims coming from every part of 
Christendom, including an ambassador from 
the Emperor Theodosius himself. Who would 
not gladly pass such a solitary life in a for¬ 
bidding cell on a lonely mountain-side, if that 
would insure an eternity of happiness in one 
of the many mansions ! 

More astounding still has been the conduct 
of those known in ecclesiastical history as pil¬ 
lar saints. For instance, there is St. Simeon 
Stylites, who about 433 A. D. took his stand 


280 The Trend of the Centuries 


on the top of a column or pillar near Antioch. 
At a height of thirty-six feet he spent day and 
night in devotions; he never lay down for 
rest but kept constantly on his feet, and when 
a running sore broke out on one foot he stood 
on the other. He ate only one scanty meal a 
day, and for thirty-seven years he thus morti¬ 
fied the flesh and maintained his position, till 
his sanctity was so widely recognized as to 
draw to his aerial retreat for consultation with 
him bishops and at least three Roman emper¬ 
ors. And that was in the region of Cilicia 
and Syria, where Paul had preached justifica¬ 
tion by faith and not by works. 

The celebrated Daniel also, who succeeded 
to Simeon’s reputation, maintained himself for 
thirty-three years on a column four miles from 
Constantinople, where for days together he 
was covered with snow and ice. Many after¬ 
ward thus tried to save themselves by a mis¬ 
taken righteousness of their own, and that is 
the secret of the whole monastic system. 
People have willingly dwelt in cells and prac¬ 
tised there all sorts of austerities, in the hope 
of placating an angry God. Rigors and mor¬ 
tifications, fastings and flagellations, have 
been multiplied, because the truth of justifica¬ 
tion by faith has not been clearly and strongly 
grasped. 


The Reformation 


281 

Take the Scala Santa at Rome, that Holy 
Staircase, so called because Christ is said to 
have ascended and descended it when he ap¬ 
peared before Pilate;—why have those twenty- 
eight marble steps been climbed by so many 
thousands on hands and knees, while with 
tears and prayers the devout have kissed each 
sacred step ? Inciting to all this has been the 
meritorious idea, as if atonement could thus 
be made for the multitude of sins weighing 
down every guilty spirit. More than a millen¬ 
nium of years ago, we are informed, Charle¬ 
magne, whose dominion was nearly as exten¬ 
sive as that of the Caesars in their palmiest 
days, not only went to Rome to receive his 
crown from the hands of a pope, but he there 
eased his conscience, or tried to do so, by su- 
perstitiously kissing each of the twenty-eight 
steps in the famous staircase, which every 
modern visitor to the Eternal City goes to 
see. 

It was as Martin Luther, seven hundred 
years after Charlemagne, was painfully going 
through this same act of devotion on Pilate’s 
staircase, that there flashed across his mind 
the immortal text, “The just shall live by 
faith,” whereupon he stopped the useless pen¬ 
ance, and ever after rejoiced in salvation by 
grace, as a free gift. From the time of the 


282 The Trend of the Centuries 

nailing of his theses on the church-door at 
Wittenberg in 1517, justification by faith and 
not by works, not by penance, not by laborious 
human efforts of any kind, was the glad tid¬ 
ings which he proclaimed to a groaning, guilt- 
burdened world. This central truth of the 
Reformation emancipates the human spirit 
from legalism. It breaks down the middle 
wall of partition reared between man and his 
God, and gives him free and direct and per¬ 
sonal access to the Saviour. The blood of 
Christ, and not human merit, becomes the 
ground of salvation. This is the truth which 
the Reformation rescued from a long burial 
amid the rubbish of ceremonies and priestly 
absolutions. 


MARTIN LUTHER THE REFORMER 


The righteous shall live by faith.”— Romans 1: 17. 


XIV 


MARTIN LUTHER THE REFORMER 

The most striking figure in the reformatory 
epoch was Martin Luther, and it is worth 
while to look into the personal life of one 
who changed the history of the world. 

His youth is full of interest. He was born 
at Eisleben in 1483. His parents were Ger¬ 
man peasants. The father was a miner, and 
with his wife and infant son removed to Mans¬ 
field, six miles away, where mining was more 
extensively carried on. There he struggled 
with poverty, and the mother carried in the 
wood on her back. Their circumstances im¬ 
proved, and yet their home was one where 
economy had to be practised. Martin being 
the firstborn naturally had his part of the 
domestic burden to bear. His was not, there¬ 
fore, a very sunny childhood. 

In the very common parental severity of 
that time, he knew what it was to be fre¬ 
quently whipped. His father once applied 
the rod to him with such vigor that he tem- 
285 


286 The Trend of the Centuries 

porarily ran away from home. And yet he 
was conscious of having the love of his father, 
whom he afterward tenderly recalled as having 
kneeled and prayed for him at his boyhood’s 
bedside. His mother, too, once flogged him 
till the blood ran, because he had taken a sin¬ 
gle nut. In his maturer years he properly 
felt that he had been too harshly dealt with, 
and he expressed it as his conviction that in 
discipline the apple should go with the rod, 
that more of love should go with the punish¬ 
ment. He felt the injustice of being whipped 
by his schoolmaster fifteen times during one 
forenoon. That he appreciated kindness is in¬ 
dicated by the fact that a stronger boy, who 
used to carry him, a weakly child, to and 
from school, was afterward very lovingly re¬ 
membered. 

At the age of fourteen he was sent for better 
educational advantages to Magdeburg, where 
he helped to support himself by singing for 
small gifts from door to door. Once a quartet 
of boys was singing before the door of a 
farmhouse, when the owner came out, and 
said roughly, “ Where are you, young ras¬ 
cals ? ” and they were so frightened that they 
ran away as fast as they could. But he called 
after them to come back and get some food 
which he had for them in his hand. They 


Martin Luther the Reformer 287 

had been so often ill-treated that they thought 
his gruff voice was indicative of an unkindness 
to which they were no strangers. 

After a year at Magdeburg, Martin was 
transferred to another school' at Eisenach, 
where he pursued his studies for four years. 
Here also he sang from house to house, and it 
was thus that he was brought to the attention 
of the wealthy Cotta lady, at whose luxurious 
table he more than once sat by cordial invita¬ 
tion, and he never forgot her Christian hospi¬ 
tality. It was at the Eisenach school, that 
the master, John Trebonius, every morning 
on entering the room where his pupils were 
gathered took off his classical cap respectfully, 
in recognition of possible greatness before him 
in embryo. One of the boys to whom he 
bowed actually was to become a great re¬ 
former, and Luther may have been inspired to 
do his best by the encouragement given from 
an expectant teacher. 

To the university at Erfurt he went in 1501, 
intending to become a lawyer. “My dear 
father,” he said, “ by his labor and the sweat 
of his brow enabled me to go there.” It was 
in the library of this institution that he first 
saw a complete copy of the Bible, at the age 
of nearly twenty, and he read the book with 
great avidity. He excelled as a scholar and 


288 The Trend of the Centuries 


was getting on finely, when there came a crisis 
in his young life. 

In the summer of 1505 he made a visit to his 
parents in the old home at Mansfield. He was 
returning to Erfurt when he was overtaken by 
a violent thunder-storm. The lightning struck 
at his very feet. He fell on his knees at so 
narrow an escape from death. He felt that 
he was not prepared to meet his God in judg¬ 
ment, and he thereupon resolved to lead a 
strictly religious life. He would not be a 
lawyer, after all, but he would become a monk. 
After a couple of weeks, one midnight the 
doors of the Augustinian monastery at Erfurt 
opened and closed, and Luther was lost to the 
world. He wrote his father of the solemn 
step he had taken, but he did not receive the 
parental benediction. His father in reply ex¬ 
pressed his displeasure, but the decision was ir¬ 
revocable, and Luther settled down to all the 
austerities of cloister life. He performed the 
most menial tasks with brush and broom. He 
begged in the streets for his order. He fasted 
and prayed, and sighed and wept, and by the 
usual rigors tried to merit eternal happiness. 
One morning he was found insensible, and was 
brought back to consciousness by the sweet 
notes of a flute played by a brother. 

He became a priest. He was called to a pro- 


Martin Luther the Reformer 289 

fessorship at Wittenberg. He was sent on a 
mission to Rome. Penniless and barefoot, after 
the manner of pilgrims, he trudged along over 
the Alps, getting sustenance at the monasteries 
on the way, or at the farmhouses. When the 
Eternal City first burst upon his vision, he fell 
on his knees, and with uplifted hands ex¬ 
claimed, “ Hail to thee, holy Rome! ” But he 
did not find this great center of his religion to 
be as holy as he had anticipated. He was 
shocked to see pope and cardinals living in 
such splendor, so unlike the apostles whose 
successors they were believed to be. He heard 
immoral priests rattling off seven masses, while 
he was reverently completing one. He learned 
of those officiating at the sacrament jocosely 
saying in Latin, “ Bread thou art, and bread 
thou shalt remain,” while deluded worshipers 
thought the wafer was being solemnly con¬ 
secrated. But he himself went honestly 
through all the pious devotions which were 
common. 

He sought Rome’s holy staircase, which so 
many had ascended in order to find peace, and 
on its steps there dawned upon him the su¬ 
preme truth of justification by faith, “ out of 
which,” he said afterward, “ through which, 
and to which all my theological opinions ebb 
and flow day and night.” The Reformation, 


290 The Trend of the Centuries 

N 

not formally but really, was launched from 
that moment. 

Soon after his return to Wittenberg, there 
came the break with Kome. Leo X sat on 
the pontifical throne. A great cathedral de¬ 
signed by Michael Angelo stood unfinished. 
St. Peter’s must be completed, must be made, 
what it has become, the grandest structure for 
worship ever erected on earth. The comple¬ 
tion of this magnificent edifice required money, 
and means could be secured by a general sale 
of indulgences. The notorious Tetzel came 
with the traffic into Germany. “Come,” he 
said to the multitudes thronging the churches 
in response to the sound of ringing bells, “ and 
I will give you letters, all properly sealed, by 
which even the sins you intend to commit may 
be pardoned.” The money was poured into a 
chest that stood before a large red cross. 

It was this abuse which stirred Luther, and 
which led him in 1517 to post his immortal 
theses on the church door at Wittenberg. 
There was tremendous excitement, which 
spread far and wide. Leo at first said, “ It is 
a drunken German who has written the theses; 
he will think differently about them when 
sober.” But he was no more intoxicated than 
was Peter at Pentecost, when a similar charge 
was made. There followed conferences and 


Martin Luther the Reformer 291 

discussions to see if the reformer could not be 
silenced. From a conference at Augsburg he 
felt it necessary to escape for his life by night. 
A papal nuncio came from Rome bearing the 
Golden Rose, with which it was hoped to gain 
over Luther’s most powerful friend and pro¬ 
tector, but the noble Frederick was not so 
easily won. We are reminded of a similar at¬ 
tempt previously to silence Savonarola, the 
illustrious Italian reformer, who to the sug¬ 
gestion of the red hat of a cardinal awaiting 
him if he would cease his reformatory move¬ 
ment replied that he preferred the red crown 
of martyrdom; and this he afterward received 
in Florence. The wily Roman legate tried his 
oiliness on Luther, complimenting him on hav¬ 
ing made so great a stir while yet so young, 
but expressing great sorrow of heart that so 
gifted a man should so misdirect his energies, 
and then he could proceed no further, for he 
broke down in tears. The reformer did not 
yield to what he says he recognized as croco¬ 
dile tears. 

He was next challenged to the great Leipsic 
discussion with the famous Doctor Eck, who was 
the ablest debater the Church of Rome had. 
Two hundred students from Wittenberg went 
to the discussion, and a thronged house lis¬ 
tened to the two champions. Since, however, 


292 The Trend of the Centuries 

argument did not prevail against the growing 
heresy, there came in due time the Pope’s bull 
of excommunication, which demanded the 
burning of Luther’s writings, the withholding 
of all intercourse with the heretic, and, if he 
remained obdurate, his final deliverance to the 
authorities, who knew how to burn the liv¬ 
ing person as well as the written word. Was 
Luther frightened into submission? On the 
contrary, he publicly announced that the next 
morning the Koman decretals would be burned. 
In the presence of a vast multitude the pro¬ 
gram was carried out, and the papal bull went 
up in smoke amid shouts of applause. Hun¬ 
dreds of students enjoyed the scene, and they 
sang a Te Deum and a dirge. Some of them 
drove through the town blowing brass trump¬ 
ets, and carrying a banner “ emblazoned with 
a bull four yards in length,” and this, with 
other obnoxious writings, they cast into the 
fire for additional fuel, while they sang an¬ 
other Te Deum and a requiem. And thus 
came about the final rupture with the great 
ecclesiastical power enthroned on the Tiber. 

There next came the dramatic contest with 
the empire itself. Charles V, in 1521, sum¬ 
moned Luther to the Diet at Worms. The 
emperor was not to be disobeyed, though it 
seemed probable that the reformer was going 


Martin Luther the Reformer 293 

to his death. He hade his weeping friends 
farewell, he passed through Leipsic where he 
had debated with Eck, through Erfurt at 
whose university he had completed his educa¬ 
tion, through Eisenach where he had studied 
in his youth. There he made his way to 
the house of the beloved Lady Cotta, and as 
he stood beneath the window where he once 
sang for bread and where he experienced a 
Christian woman’s kindness, as memories of 
the past came up, the tears flowed freely. He 
continued his journey, and drawing near the 
city of Worms, a friend begged him to pro¬ 
ceed no farther, if he valued his life, where¬ 
upon he spoke those words which have been 
ringing down the centuries ever since : “Were 
there as many devils there as there are tiles 
upon the roofs, yet would I enter that city.” 
When he entered it, the streets were crowded 
with people eager to see the miner’s son who 
had defied the Pope, and who was now to appear 
before the most powerful monarch on earth. 

There followed that celebrated defense be¬ 
fore the emperor in the presence of perhaps 
the most distinguished audience that ever 
gathered. Dignitaries, civil and religious, 
were there in full force, and the vast hall shone 
with splendid regalia. “ Pluck up thy spirit, 
little monk,” said an armed baron, as the re- 


294 The Trend of the Centuries 

former moved toward the platform; and he 
did show a courageous front, as he spoke be¬ 
fore that great assembly, and closed with the 
eloquent peroration, “ Unless, therefore, I am 
convinced by the testimony of Scripture or by 
the clearest reasoning, I cannot and I will not 
retract. Here I stand; I can do no other¬ 
wise. God help me ! Amen.” 

Of course the decision was against him, and 
as soon as his safe-conduct expired, he was to 
be seized and delivered up to the emperor, who, 
though urged to the contrary, stood by his 
agreement because he said that he did not 
wish to blush as the emperor Sigismund did 
when Huss charged him with violating his 
pledged word. But at the expiration of the 
legal document of protection Luther would no 
longer be safe. He must, therefore, hasten his 
departure, that he might get as far away as 
possible from his persecutors while yet under 
the imperial shield. 

In the dusk of an evening he was entering 
the Thuringian forest. Suddenly there issued 
from the gloom of the woods armed and 
masked horsemen, who seized him, threw a 
cloak about him. and with their prisoner dis¬ 
appeared in the darkness. They pursued a 
circuitous route, and at eleven o’clock in the 
night they neared an ancient fortress standing 


Martin Luther the Reformer 295 

on an eminence and cut off from all approach 
except by a drawbridge, which was let down, 
and over which they passed into the castle, 
whose doors opened and immediately closed. 
Many supposed that he had been kidnapped 
by enemies and killed, but he was a prisoner 
of friends, who at the moving of the elector 
Frederick had taken this method to hide him 
from his persecutors, who soon would have 
been at liberty to carry out the purpose of the 
adjourned Diet. Only a few knew that he 
was safe in Wartburg Castle, where he ex¬ 
changed the garb of a monk for the dress of a 
knight. As “ Squire George ” he let his beard 
grow, roamed the woods in search of straw¬ 
berries, hunted partridges and other game. 

But in his seclusion he also studied. He be¬ 
gan his German version of the Bible, which 
has been used ever since, except that the Ger¬ 
mans now like ourselves have also a revised 
version. He completed the Hew Testament 
there. In that castle also, where, he said, 
“ Birds from their homes in the trees do con¬ 
tinually praise God,” may have been suggested 
that best of all Luther’s hymns: 

“Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott.” 

“ A mighty fortress is our God.” 

There came labors still more abundant 


296 The Trend of the Centuries 

during the next quarter of a century, which 
covered the rest of the reformer’s life. Be¬ 
cause of excesses among his followers at 
Wittenberg he determined to leave his retreat 
and to return to his old field of action. Carl- 
stadt, a fellow professor, had gone off into one 
of those vagaries which occasionally seize the 
human mind. He became imbued with mys¬ 
ticism, renounced all learning, bought a 
small farm, wore a peasant’s coat and be¬ 
came known as “Neighbor Andrew,” thus 
antedating the Brook Farm experiment near 
Boston by American literati. Luther once 
saw him standing with bare feet, loading 
stable refuse upon a cart, and we are re¬ 
minded of Kipley and Hawthorne and others 
engaged at such tasks. 

Carlstadt became a socialist of the extreme 
type, holding the most extravagant views, 
advocating the violent destruction of images 
in the churches, favoring polygamy, urging 
the reversion of all property every fifty years 
to the original owners. The strange move¬ 
ment grew till there was an armed uprising of 
peasants. “ Forward now! ” said one of their 
leaders, “while the fire is hot; let not the 
blood cool upon your swords.” Convents and 
castles were burned to the ground. There 
were at one time thirty thousand men under 


Martin Luther the Reformer 297 

arms. It was the beginnings of this craze 
which brought Luther from the Wartburg to 
Wittenberg. 

He was a reformer, but not a revolutionist, 
and with marvelous common sense he held the 
reins and kept the wheels of progress from 
being dashed to pieces upon dangerous rocks. 
He laughed people out of an imaginary illness, 
known as the sweating sickness, which was 
spreading like an epidemic among the nervous 
and hysterical. He himself awoke one night 
in a profuse perspiration, and he believed that 
if he had not resisted with all his might he 
also would have fallen ill. He could name 
several witnesses whom he compelled to get 
out of bed, and who afterward laughed at 
their fancied sickness. He opposed all that 
was fanatical and extravagant. 

Time would fail to tell of all his activities. 
He wrote an answer to Henry YIII, who by 
his defense of the papacy gained the title, 
“ Defender of the Faith,” which English sov¬ 
ereigns still bear, although for centuries it has 
been the Protestant faith which they have 
defended. When the Diet of Spires, in 1529, 
took a reactionary position, he had a hand in 
the framing of that memorable protest, which 
gave to the reformers the name of Protestants, 
a name that has been perpetuated until the 


298 The Trend of the Centuries 

present. He had a controversy with Zwingli, 
and as they sat at the table discussing the 
Lord’s Supper, the stubborn German chalked 
down, “ This is my body” and insisted upon 
his view of the sacrament, consubstantiation, 
as against the papal transubstantiation, and as 
against the more spiritual view of the Swiss 
reformer, who with his simple memorial idea 
has gained the day with the Protestant public. 

When again in 1530 that summary of the 
Reformed Faith known as the Augsburg 
Confession was made, Luther was the ruling 
spirit in the result reached, though he did not 
dare go any nearer than Coburg Castle. There, 
three hours daily, he prayed for his brethren 
at Augsburg, between whom and himself there 
was constant communication. He believed that 
all would come out right, and he could and did 
write jocosely of the birds about his castle hold¬ 
ing an “ imperial diet,” and planning a crusade 
against the wheat and barley and other fruits 
of the land, and he admired the beautiful 
palace in which they met, with the sky for its 
roof, and with green meadows and leafy trees 
for its floor. His cheerful confidence in the 
final issue was justified, for there followed the 
Protestant League of German princes, and the 
Reformation moved on to greater and greater 
success. 


Martin Luther the Reformer 299 

We will conclude by noting Luther’s do¬ 
mestic life and closing days. He had married 
in 1525 an escaped nun, Catherine von Bora, 
in whose society he took great delight, call¬ 
ing her playfully his “ Doctress Katy.” His 
affection for her is indicated by the fact that 
he called the epistle to the Galatians, which 
was his favorite, his “ Catherine von Bora.” 
She bore him six children whom he passion¬ 
ately loved, and who made his home a para¬ 
dise. From Coburg Castle he wrote a charm¬ 
ing letter to his firstborn, a boy of fourteen, 
to whom he thus pictured heaven: “ I know 

of a pretty garden where merry children run 
about that wear little golden coats, and gather 
nice apples and pears and cherries and plums 
under the trees, and sing and dance, and ride 
on pretty horses with gold bridles and silver 
saddles.” The reformer, though so great, took 
a deep interest in his children. He would tell 
proudly of his little Margaret singing hymns 
at the age of four. When a favorite daughter 
was dying, at fourteen, broken-hearted he said 
to her, “ Lena, dear, my little daughter, thou 
wouldst love to remain here with thy father; 
art thou willing to go to that other Father ? ” 
“Yes, dear father,” she answered, “just as God 
wills.” He knelt by her bed, and wept bitterly, 
and when she died it was in his arms. Gazing 


300 The Trend of the Centuries 

into the coffin he said, “ My darling Lena, thou 
wilt rise again and shine like a star—yea, as 
the sun.” He was faithful in the training of 
his household, repeating every morning with 
his children the Ten Commandments, the 
Creed, the Lord’s Prayer, and a psalm, and 
when they died he was confident of a glad 
reunion. 

And by and by, in 1546, he too went hence. 
He had gone to Eisleben, where he caught a 
hard cold which terminated fatally. He died 
^ where he was born, assuring weeping friends 
that he died joyfully in the faith he had 
preached. His body was borne back to his sor¬ 
rowing Catherine, and he was buried at Wit¬ 
tenberg, mourned by thousands. When Huss, 
whose name in Bohemian means goose, was 
condemned to death, he said in reference to 
the scornful gibes at his name, that he might 
be a “ poor, tame fowl,” but that in the future 
there would spring up a rarer bird than him¬ 
self. He is said to have predicted that the 
song of a swan would rise from his ashes. At 
any rate, Luther has well been termed the 
“ Swan of Eisleben,” where he passed away 
triumphantly. He, so to speak, died singing. 
Though he had a certain roughness at times, 
yet, a lover of nature and children and a com¬ 
poser of Christian hymns as he was, there is 


Martin Luther the Reformer 301 

also a charming softness to his character, and 
we can adopt Carlyle’s characterization of 
him: “ Unsnbduable granite, piercing far and 

wide into the heavens, yet in the clefts of it 
fountains, green, beautiful valleys with flow¬ 
ers ! ” 

Such was one of those manifestly “provi¬ 
dential men” constantly being raised up to 
keep the good cause ever moving forward. 
And there has been on the part of Christianity 
this steady advance without any real retro¬ 
gression, when a view that sweeps the centuries 
is taken. The progress has been like that of 
the incoming tide. With reference to that we 
sometimes sit down and watch the little back¬ 
ward currents that recede on the sands, for¬ 
getting that while there is this constant ebbing 
the great flood keeps moving up the beach. 
The tide itself, once started, never stops till it 
reaches high-water mark, till it breaks in 
magnificent billows high upon the shore. 
Like that, Christianity is advancing. There 
may be now and then receding undercurrents, 
but above these is the grand tidal wave, the 
main movement of the water, rushing on with 
increasing volume and force and intensity; 
and it shall roll on and upward, till the mighty 
mass washes the shining shore in the silver 
tide of heaven. Each century the religious 


302 The Trend of the Centuries 

high-water mark is placed a little higher. Oc¬ 
casionally an unbeliever is foolish enough to act 
in sober earnest the part which was only 
played by England’s ancient king, Canute, 
who sat on the seashore at Southampton, and 
pretended to order the tide to move backward, 
but who had himself to move on and up the 
beach, or be engulfed by the advancing flood. 
None can stay the oceanic tide of a steadily 
progressing Christianity. 


On such a full sea are we now afloat.’’ 


THE SPANISH ARMADA: SECURITY 
AGAINST HOSTILE FLEETS 


“Thou didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered them.” 
—Exodus 15 : 10 . 

“ But there the Lord will be with us in majesty, a place 
of broad rivers and streams wherein shall go no galley with 
oars, neither shall gallant ship pass thereby.”— Isaiah 
33 : 21 . 


XV 


THE SPANISH ARMADA : SECURITY AGAINST 
HOSTILE FLEETS 

In the summer of 1588 occurred the defeat of 
the Spanish Armada, the scattering of the so- 
called “ invincible ” fleet sent by Spain for the 
overthrow of England, and by Catholicism for 
the annihilation of Protestantism. This crisis 
in the political and religious history of the 
world is worth considering as illustrating the 
truth of an overruling Providence in the affairs 
of men. 

The situation was one of great alarm. 
Spain, now feeble and without influence, was 
then the leading power of the globe. Her 
navy was the finest that sailed the seas, and 
gained undying fame in a marvelous record of 
discovery whereby, through Columbus and 
others, a new world was brought to light. 
But this luster has been repeatedly tarnished 
by defeat after defeat, like that at Trafalgar, 
when Nelson signaled, “ England expects 
every man to do his duty,” and immortalized 
himself by triumphing over the combined 
305 


306 The Trend of the Centuries 

fleets of both France and Spain, until now 
Britain is mistress of the oceans, and several 
other nations have a greater naval strength 
than Spain. 

At the time of which we are speaking, how¬ 
ever, she stood at the head of the procession in 
navigation of the seas. She had rich posses¬ 
sions in Africa, and the new continent dis¬ 
covered by Columbus was almost wholly hers, 
so that she received vast revenues from Mex¬ 
ico, South America, and the isles of the sea. 
Nearly all Europe, too, was at her feet, and 
she sent her armies to rule the Netherlands. 
There the greatest military genius of the age 
was trying in the year 1588 to reestablish 
over the sturdy Dutch a supremacy against 
which there had been a revolt. Philip II was 
the king who thus presumed to lord it over all 
the continental powers. With France torn by 
dissension, England seemed the only obstacle 
to the realization of his dreams for universal 
dominion. All else favored his unbridled am¬ 
bition, even to the general religious condition. 

Philip II championed the cause of the Holy 
Catholic Church, in favor of which a reaction 
had begun. Protestantism, after the first flush 
of success, was losing ground. It had been ex¬ 
tirpated in Spain and Italy. It had lost half 
of Germany, its original stronghold. Philip 


The Spanish Armada 307 

saw the way the tide seemed to be going, and 
he aspired to place himself at the head of the 
tidal wave. His idea was to reunite, says 
Hume, “the whole Christian world in the 
Catholic communion.” The one thing which 
seemed to make this bold project impossible of 
execution was England. Philip felt that Eng¬ 
land could be conquered, and to this task he 
addressed himself. He sent reinforcements to 
his famous general in Holland, who at the 
proper moment was to join his command with 
the naval force of Spain, as the latter sailed up 
the British channel. 

This fleet was to be the main factor in the 
struggle, and accordingly great efforts were 
made to bring it to its best. It was already 
the most powerful in the world, for the British 
navy had not yet become illustrious. For 
three years, in every Spanish port shipbuilding 
was the most active industry, and at length 
the Invincible Armada, which had been the 
talk of all Europe, was ready to sail forth on 
its crusade. There was a perfect furor of ex¬ 
citement throughout the Continent. Most of 
the prominent Catholic princes enlisted in the 
cause, which was to terminate so gloriously. 
The Pope himself promised financial support, 
granted plenary indulgences to all who would 
embark upon ths sacred voyage, and excommu- 


308 The Trend of the Centuries 

nicated the English queen, Elizabeth, absolving 
her subjects from their oaths of allegiance. 

The Protestants everywhere watched the 
course of events with fear and trembling, but, 
because of the general retrogression of their 
cause, they were too weak and disheartened to 
lift a helping hand for their rights and liber¬ 
ties. They could only watch and pray, as the 
storm slowly gathered. Hallam in his “ Con¬ 
stitutional History ” refers to the crisis as the 
“ agony of the Protestant faith and English 
name.” Both these were threatened with ex¬ 
tinction, and, says the same high authority, 
“ Europe stood by in fearful suspense to behold 
what should be the result ” from this combina¬ 
tion of “ the craft of Pome, the power of Philip, 
the genius of Farnese.” Pope, king and gen¬ 
eral were of one mind. 

So far as the cause of civil and religious lib¬ 
erty could be represented by any one nation, 
it was at that time centered in the English. 
They were the head and front of a progressive 
as against a medieval civilization, and they 
were, as Isaiah says, surrounded by “broad 
rivers and streams.” They inhabited an island 
whose every side was washed by 0 I 4 ocean. 
It was a terrible emergency, which must have 
tried the faith of the strongest, as the splendid 
Armada prepared to sweep victoriously up the 


The Spanish Armada 309 

English channel, while an immense flotilla of 
flat-bottomed boats was to convey the cavalry 
and infantry of Europe’s most successful gen¬ 
eral from the Holland shore to a junction with 
the Spanish fleet, and the united land and 
naval forces were at one blow to annihilate the 
stronghold of Protestantism. The whole sub¬ 
sequent history of the world was to be deter¬ 
mined then and there. It was to be decided 
whether an enlightened civilization and a pure 
Christianity, or intellectual thraldom and re¬ 
ligious superstition, should control the future. 
There never was a more tremendous issue at 
stake. Which was to be victorious, God or 
the Spanish Armada ? 

Queen Elizabeth saw the importance of the 
contest, and nerved herself for a life and death 
struggle. She made her appeal, to quote her 
very language, in the name of “ country, liberty, 
wives, children, lands, lives, and, which was 
specially to be regarded, the profession of the 
true and sincere religion of Christ.” And 
when her faithful subjects came together, she 
rode horseback among them, and encouraged 
them to deeds of valor, and expressed her will¬ 
ingness, if it were necessary, to march in per¬ 
son before them against the foe. The navy as 
well as the army was put in readiness for the 
conflict, and such was the loyal enthusiasm 


3 io The Trend of the Centuries 

that private citizens of wealth built and manned 
ships at their own expense, and even liberal 
Catholics, who did not believe in Continental 
aggression upon their country, enlisted for God 
and home and native land under Lord Howard, 
with Drake as his most illustrious subordinate. 

And now the Invincible Armada, as the fleet 
was proudly called by her friends, set sail from 
the Spanish coast. She, however, was driven 
into port by a storm, and it was reported in Eng¬ 
land that the enterprise had failed. But after 
repairs she started forth again, with the sym¬ 
pathies of the whole Catholic world, outside of 
Great Britain, and having on board troops that 
had never known defeat and that had the con¬ 
fidence which fanatics always have in a wild 
crusade. In the meantime, the English began 
to doubt if the Armada would come, when, on 
a July day toward evening, a ship with sails all 
set came flying before the wind, and, hastening 
into the harbor, the Scotch skipper announced 
the approach of the Spanish fleet which he had 
seen that very morning. Macaulay, inspired 
to a poetic strain and breaking away from his 
usual historic prose, paints the graphic scene as 
follows: 

‘ 1 It was about the lovely close 
Of a warm summer day, 

There came a gallant merchant-ship 
Full sail to Plymouth Bay; 


The Spanish Armada 311 

Her crew had seen Castile’s black fleet, 
Beyond Aurigny’s isle, 

At earliest twilight, on the waves, 

Lie heaving many a mile.” 

At the alarming intelligence, soon all was 
commotion with swaying masts, clanging bells, 
bugle-note, and drum-beat, while beacon lights 
(the old substitute for flashing telegraphic 
messages) were kindled to send on the news 
from hilltop to hilltop. 

u Far on the deep the Spaniard saw, 

Along each southern shire, 

Cape beyond cape, in endless range, 

Those twinkling points of fire.” 

To London itself, the capital, the tidings flew 
that dreadful night. 

“ Then bugle’s note and cannon’s roar 
The deathlike silence broke, 

And with one start, and with one cry, 

The royal city woke. 

At once on all her stately gates 
Arose the answering fires; 

At once the wild alarum clashed 
From all her reeling spires; 

11 And from the farthest wards was heard 
The rush of hurrying feet, 

And the broad stream of pikes and flags 
Rushed down each roaring street; 

And broader still became the blaze, 

And louder still the din, 

As fast from every village round 
The horse came spurring in.” 


312 The Trend of the Centuries 

Thus, on the double-quick from every quarter, 
does the historian, inspired to a poetic strain, 
represent the English as rallying; and there is 
no passage of Scripture which they might 
have appropriated as more happily expressing 
their hope and confidence than this from 
Isaiah: “ The Lord will be with us in majesty, 

a place of broad rivers and streams; wherein 
shall go no galley with oars, neither shall gal¬ 
lant ship pass thereby.” 

The British fleet lay at anchor, and at last 
the great Armada hove in sight. The lofty 
masts, the swelling sails, the towering prows, 
presented an imposing spectacle. On she 
came, a thing of beauty, the splendid fleet be¬ 
ing in the form of an immense crescent, which 
measured seven miles from horn to horn. Up 
the English channel she grandly moved, passed 
the point where lay the British ships, which 
immediately wheeled in on the rear, and main¬ 
tained a running fight, while the Armada was 
slowly making for a junction with the land 
forces under the general in the Netherlands. 

For a week the skirmishing went on. Then 
came the crisis. The last Sunday of July, 
1588, was made a day of prayer all over Eliza¬ 
beth’s realm. At two o’clock Monday morning, 
July 29th, eight mysterious ships from the Brit¬ 
ish fleet moved out toward the formidable 


The Spanish Armada 313 

Armada with her more than one hundred and 
thirty vessels. Were they deserting the Eng¬ 
lish? Were they coming to propose terms of 
surrender ? Soon the secret was disclosed, for 
they were fire-ships. Filled with combustibles, 
they burst into flame as they drove full head 
upon the beautiful crescent form; and the 
Spanish fleet, panic-stricken, cut their cables, 
and sped away in great confusion. The little 
English ships, which were not nearly so large 
as the Spanish, darted hither and thither, 
striking here and there, and getting away each 
time before the clumsy, unwieldy Armada 
could become adjusted to the new position, 
till the great crescent creature, worried and 
harassed, made for the northern seas, hoping 
to round the north of Scotland and thus to re¬ 
turn to Spain. 

But, as she fled northward, Providence swept 
in with a terrific tempest to complete the ruin, 
and not half of the vessels ever reached home, 
many being wrecked along the Scottish and 
Irish shores. A mere remnant of the proud 
Armada, after the lapse of weeks, reached 
Spain to tell the story of the disaster. Thus 
ended a battle so important in its historic 
bearings, that Creasy puts it among “ the fifteen 
decisive battles of the world,’’ and it may well 
be numbered among “ those few battles, of 


314 The Trend of the Centuries 

which,” says Hallam, “ a contrary event would 
have essentially varied the drama of the 
world in all its subsequent scenes.” 

And never was a victory gained of which it 
could be said more truly in the language of 
Scripture, that the battle is not to the strong, 
nor the race to the swift. On the one side 
was the most powerful monarch of the age, 
who dominated the politics of all Europe, and 
whose empire was colossal in extent, for Spain, 
and not England, was then the leading nation 
in the federation of the world and in the par¬ 
liament of powers. On the same side was the 
greatest general of the century, the Duke of 
Parma, while substantially the whole Catholic 
world was enthusiastic in carrying the enter¬ 
prise to a successful issue. On the other side 
was a little island which had not yet risen to 
its magnificent later fame, which had no well- 
equipped army flushed with success like the 
Spanish. Besides, the Protestantism of the 
Continent was too weak from frequent defeat 
to furnish any assistance other than sympathy. 
Then, when it came to the immediate agencies 
by which the battle was fought, the British 
fleet was so manifestly inferior to the Armada, 
both in numbers and in construction, that the 
ships of the former never once ventured to join 
with the monster vessels of the latter in a 


The Spanish Armada 315 

square and out-and-out contest, but recourse 
was had to the tactics of harassing the enemy 
from a distance and of surprises on this side 
and on that. It was a kind of guerrilla war¬ 
fare by sea. Opportune moments had to be 
chosen, and strategic movements had to be 
adopted, and it could never be told before¬ 
hand what the result would be. 

In short, the English did the best they 
could with their great disadvantages, and then 
trusted, some would say, to luck, but the more 
reverent would say, to Providence; and most 
grandly did Providence guide the desultory 
attacks, till the great Armada, the admiration - 
of the world, fled, defeated, northward, there 
to experience more directly the frown of 
Providence in the terrible storm which com¬ 
pleted the ruin. It was a signal instance of 
divine intervention in human affairs, and the 
medal struck to commemorate the event very 
fittingly bore the Scriptural words, “Thou 
didst blow with thy wind, the sea covered 
them.” 

God surely is in history, working out his 
purpose. He is always present in emergen¬ 
cies to shape the result, and to give triumph 
to those who more particularly stand for hu¬ 
mane and progressive and Christian ideas, to 
help the side which contains the forces that 


316 The Trend of the Centuries 

are to lift mankind nearer heaven, and that 
• are to speed the human race on toward the 
millennial era which is promised. This one 
marked case of divine intervention should 
strengthen our faith in the fact of an over¬ 
ruling Providence. The situation was really 
desperate. “ Let not a god intervene,” said 
Horace, the Latin poet, “unless there be a 
knot worth his untying.” Such a knot the 
historic circumstances which we have been 
considering constituted. But the knot was 
untied, because the supreme Arbiter of na¬ 
tional destinies addressed himself to the task. 
He made a quick end of the formidable oppo¬ 
sition to the Protestant cause as represented 
in the English nation. 

So summarily did he dispose of what had 
sorely perplexed and disturbed Elizabeth and 
her whole realm, that we are reminded of a 
classical incident connected with the capital 
of ancient Phrygia. When that country was 
politically unsettled, full of civil dissension, 
an oracle had informed the people who were 
gathered together, that a wagon would bring 
them a ruler. Directly a poor peasant named 
Gordius came driving ,to the assembly. Of 
natural dignity and manly demeanor, he was 
at once acknowledged as king, and he dedi¬ 
cated the vehicle, which had brought him such 


The Spanish Armada 317 

good fortune, to the god Zeus as a thank-offer¬ 
ing. The pole of thp rude conveyance was 
fastened to the yoke by an intricate knot of* 
bark, and the story was that whosoever should 
untie this knot would become master of Asia. 
Alexander the Great in his march eastward 
drew his sword and speedily severed the knot 
of Gordius, and hence the common saying ever 
since of “cutting the Gordian knot” to ex¬ 
press a summary way of disposing of a diffi¬ 
culty. Such short work did the God of heaven 
make of the knot to be untied when the Span¬ 
ish Armada threatened his cause with disas¬ 
ter. He cut the Gordian knot, he sent a storm 
to hasten the defeat of his enemies, and the 
divine character of the victory is universally 
recognized. 




THE EDICT OF NANTES: THE STRUG¬ 
GLE FOR FREEDOM OF WORSHIP 


“They shall sit every man under his vine and under his 
fig tree ; and none shall make them afraid.”—M icah 4 : 4. 


XVI 


THE EDICT OF NANTES: THE STRUGGLE FOR 
FREEDOM OF WORSHIP 

We need occasionally to see what the broad 
movements of divine Providence have been. 
We should trace the course of God’s people 
not only through the Old Testament period 
and the New Testament, but also through 
subsequent times. We should remember that 
the Acts of the Apostles have been reproduced 
to a greater or less degree in every century of 
the Christian era. God did not die with the 
birth and establishment of Christianity. He 
has been accomplishing his purpose through 
all the nineteen centuries of the Spirit’s special 
dispensation. A chapter from the history of 
the Christian Church here and there tends 
to broaden our minds, and at the same time 
makes us estimate more highly the blessings 
which are ours above those of previous ages. 
One point in which we are greatly favored is 
in the matter of freedom of worship, and we 
sometimes forget the struggle there has been 
to attain the felicity pictured by the prophet: 

321 


322 The Trend of the Centuries 

“ They shall sit every man under his vine and 
under his fig tree; and none shall make them 
afraid.” 

That is quite a different prophecy from the 
one uttered by Christ, when he said, “They 
shall deliver you up unto tribulation, and shall 
kill you: and ye shall be hated of all the na¬ 
tions for my name’s sake.” We are living in 
the dispensation of freedom of worship; we 
sit under our vine and fig-tree with none to 
molest. But multitudes have been fated to 
pass their years under another condition of 
things, of persecution for conscience’ sake. 
We need to review the tragic facts once in a 
while, that we may appreciate how highly 
favored we are in these days. We need to 
consider what the saints of the past’ have en¬ 
dured, that there may be stirred within our 
hearts gratitude for the privileges we enjoy. 
October 18, 1685, occurred the historic revo¬ 
cation of the famous Edict of Nantes, around 
which we are now to let our thoughts revolve. 

We start a century earlier than this date. 
France was divided between Romanists and 
Huguenots. The latter had been made to 
suffer bitter persecutions from the former. 
Catherine de Medici, the queen mother, after 
many failures to extirpate heresy by overt acts 
of cruelty, had resolved to try a new plan. 


The Edict of Nantes 323 

She would be very gracious, and she knew how 
to be. Shakespeare says that one can “ smile 
and smile, and be a villain,” but the French 
Protestants had not yet learned that Catherine 
could do so. They responded to her overtures 
as she proposed to unite the two parties by a 
distinguished marriage. 

Henry of Navarre was a Huguenot prince. 
He had been brought up in the country, 
nourished on plain diet, and had been allowed 
to play bareheaded and barefooted with the 
children of humble peasants. Still, royal blood 
flowed in his veins, and he grew up to be a 
youth of engaging manners and of brilliant 
parts. Catherine had a daughter, Margaret, 
sister of the young king, Charles IX. The 
princess was a Catholic, and why should not 
she and the Protestant prince of Navarre join 
hand and heart in a wedlock which would also 
harmonize religious differences ? Catherine de¬ 
cided that it should be so, and young people in 
those times had no alternative but to submit to 
their superiors. 

The wedding-day was appointed, and the 
Huguenots crowded into Paris to witness the 
auspicious event which was to terminate all 
their troubles, and give them equal liberty 
with the Romanists. August 18, 1572, was 
the day of the joyous nuptials. In the pres- 


324 The Trend of the Centuries 

ence of assembled thousands the ceremony 
occurred. Margaret, who loved another and 
who had all along remonstrated against the 
union, was asked if she would take Henry for 
her husband. She stood sullenly silent, but 
her brother the king, close behind her, with 
his hand forced her head forward in an ap¬ 
parent assent. This little embarrassment did 
not seriously interfere with the program, for 
the whole thing was a matter of state policy, 
and the occasion, therefore, was regarded a 
most happy one. The Huguenots especially 
rejoiced, for they would be no more persecuted. 
They would henceforth be permitted to worship 
in accordance with the dictates of their own 
consciences. 

Catherine smiled, and remarked in confi¬ 
dence, “ The cautious fish have taken the 
bait.” Only the first scene of the tragedy 
she had prepared was as yet enacted. The 
second scene followed in five days. Never 
before had so many Protestants been massed 
together unarmed. It was the fair plotter’s 
opportunity; she could destroy them at one 
blow. St. Bartholomew’s day was selected for 
the execution of her plot. At midnight a pistol 
shot was heard in Paris from the royal palace. 
The tocsin was sounded by a church bell, 
that of the St. Germain L’Auxerrois, which 


The Edict of Nantes 325 

because of this is pointed out to every tourist 
by the guides. The signal was understood by 
the previously instructed murderers, who rushed 
forth to the carnage. 

“ Slay to the last, and let not one escape,” 
shouted the leaders. The purest and the most 
eminent Huguenot, Admiral Coligny, was 
among the first to be killed. As the assassins 
broke into his chamber, he rose from his bed 
and calmly kneeled in prayer. He was stabbed 
to the heart and his body flung out of the 
window, where it fell with a heavy thud at the 
feet of the Duke of Guise, into whose face the 
warm blood spurted. When by the light of a 
torch the duke stooped to see if it really was the 
desired and expected victim, he showed his 
satisfaction by giving the corpse a brutal kick. 
He commanded the head to be cut off and to 
be sent as a trophy to Catherine. The decapi¬ 
tated body was dragged through the streets, 
was thrown into the river, and later was hung 
on a gibbet till its decomposition became 
offensive to all except to young King Charles, 
who said : “ The carcass of an enemy always 

smells pleasantly.” He himself from a window 
had shot down the flying wretches, when they 
came within the range of his musket. 

For three days and nights the massacre con¬ 
tinued. The streets of Paris ran with human 


326 The Trend of the Centuries 

blood. Couriers were despatched throughout 
France, until thousands upon thousands of 
innocent lives were taken by the movement 
thus inaugurated. One monster alone could 
afterward boast: “ This arm,” and he proudly 
bared it, “ on the day of St. Bartholomew put 
to death four hundred heretics.” 

Protestant Europe was frozen with horror at 
the terrible tidings. Queen Elizabeth of Eng¬ 
land and her court put on mourning. On the 
contrary, Philip II, of Spain, whose infamous 
Duke of Alva perpetrated equally atrocious 
crimes in the Netherlands,—this heartless 
Spanish monarch sent his congratulations to 
Charles IX, exchanged words of felicitation 
with his courtiers, ordered the Te Deum to be 
chanted, and for the first and only time in his 
life laughed aloud. At Rome a special service 
was held at St. Peter’s to render devout thanks¬ 
giving for the good news. Cannon thun¬ 
dered, bonfires blazed, and shouting proces¬ 
sions marched through the streets of the 
Eternal City. Pope Gregory XIII, to com¬ 
memorate the happy event, had a medal struck 
with his image on one side, while on the other 
was a representation of a destroying angel 
striking down the Huguenots, together with 
the Latin inscription, Iluguenotorum Strages , 
1572—“ The slaughter of the Huguenots.” 


The Edict of Nantes 327 

The king, without whose order the massacre 
could never have occurred, was visited, it would 
seem, with the divine judgment. About a 
week after the tragedy, one midnight he 
sprang from his bed, and declared to his fright¬ 
ened attendants that he had heard shrieks and 
groans and piteous wailings, exactly like those 
of St. Bartholomew’s day. He was haunted 
constantly by these phantom voices of agony. 
He became more and more gloomy and 
wretched. “ Sleeping or waking,” he once 
said to his physician, “the murdered Hugue¬ 
nots seem ever present to my eyes, with 
ghastly faces, and weltering in their blood.” 
Within two years he died of remorse, and, 
says the historian, his body was “ bathed in a 
bloody sweat, which oozed from every pore.” 

The Huguenots came unsuspiciously to the 
wedding at Paris, expecting an end to perse¬ 
cution in the happy union of Protestant prince 
and Catholic princess, but they were basely 
betrayed to their death. It was not yet theirs 
to worship under their own vine and fig-tree, 
with none to make afraid. Such is our priv¬ 
ilege, and how thankful we should be that we 
are not called upon to suffer as did those of 
whom we are being reminded ! In the Hugue¬ 
nots was fulfilled the prediction of Christ, that 
his disciples should be killed. In us, to-day, 


328 The Trend of the Centuries 

Micah’s prophecy is realized, that we should 
worship unmolested and in our own way. 

We come now to another scene in the un¬ 
folding drama, to the war of the three Henrys 
out of which, after varying fortunes, came the 
Edict of Nantes. The Bartholomew massacre 
did not, as was hoped, exterminate Protestant¬ 
ism. The struggle was renewed. The Cath¬ 
olic League was formed, headed by Henry 
of Guise, who * at first united with the royal¬ 
ists led by King Henry III. The two moved 
to the overthrow of the Huguenots under 
Henry of Navarre, whose beard at the try¬ 
ing crisis, says one historian, “became white 
in a night.” But the Huguenot hero bore up 
magnificently, and lived to see his two power¬ 
ful enemies arrayed against each other, until 
Henry the king had Henry the duke mur¬ 
dered, while a disdainful kick administered by 
royalty to the corpse was only repeating the 
insult which the dead man himself in life had 
offered to Admiral Coligny a few years before. 
Then, in the changed circumstances, the king 
deserted the League and made an alliance with 
Navarre, only to be assassinated with Jesuitical 
sanction by one of those he had recently 
served, and the Huguenot leader was left 
alone to fight his way to the throne which 
was now his by inheritance. 


The Edict of Nantes 329 

He gained victory after victory. He marched 
through France, subduing town after town. 
His dash and confidence captivated everybody. 
In private life he met with many sad defeats 
from sin, but in a military sense he was in¬ 
vincible. It was on the plain of Ivry where 
he won his proudest laurels. That was in 1590, 
but we can still see the historic white plume 
waving triumphantly, as his brave ten thou¬ 
sand advanced to meet sixteen thousand. He 
first knelt in prayer with his followers, and 
then he addressed them in the memorable 
words* which still have thrilling power: “If 
the standard fail you, keep my plume in your 
eyes ; you will always find it in the path of 
honor and duty.” As his triple white plume, 
nodding from lofty helmet, appeared from time 
to time, when the smoke of battle temporarily 
lifted, a shout of victory went up, because this 
original “ plumed knight ” was thus shown to 
be always at the front and in the thickest of 
the fight, where he remained till the enemy 
was defeated and the triumph was complete. 

With this decisive battle the cause of the 
Huguenots seemed on the ascendent, when 
ambition got the better of principle in the 
brilliant Henry of Navarre. For the sake of 
peace, as a matter of policy, he abjured Prot¬ 
estantism, which he favored from intellectual 


330 The Trend of the Centuries 

conviction and not from a regenerated heart. 
He professedly espoused Catholicism, and with 
little opposition took the throne as Henry IY. 
He reigned wisely and generously. He it 
was who wished his poorest subject to be 
able to have a fat fowl for every Sunday’s 
dinner. His most lasting renown, however, 
comes from his improvement of the condi¬ 
tion of the hitherto oppressed Huguenots. 
Even after he became outwardly a Eomanist, 
he signed, in April of 1598, the celebrated 
Edict of Nantes, which gave them the right 
to worship God in accordance with their indi¬ 
vidual preferences. 

There were fanatics who did not approve of 
this guarantee of religious freedom, but he re¬ 
mained firm in his purpose; he did not again 
lower the white plume. For his friendliness 
to the cause of liberty of conscience he was 
finally made to pay the penalty in a violent 
death in 1610 from the dagger of a bigot who 
sprang into the royal carriage, and struck down 
the plumed knight of our story. He had, 
however, fought the cause of the Huguenots 
through to success in the promulgation of the 
Edict of Nantes, that second magna cliarta of 
the liberties which we at present enjoy. Let 
us not forget at what a cost freedom of wor¬ 
ship was purchased. We worship under our 


The Edict of Nantes 331 

own vine and fig-tree with none to make afraid 
because of determined wars waged around this 
Edict by faithful and heroic ancestors. We sit 
and quietly worship in our pleasant sanctuaries 
because of these struggles and victories in the 
past. 

Once more the curtain rises in the hurrying 
of our drama to its close. The first was a mar¬ 
riage scene, the second was a scene of tragedy 
in the never-to-be-forgotten massacre, and the 
third was a scene of victory with the white 
plume in the foreground. Lastly, there comes 
disaster in the revocation of the Edict of 
Nantes, while yet its essential principle subse¬ 
quently prevailed and is to-day everywhere 
regnant. 

Under Louis XIII, the iron hand of his 
great minister of state, the immortal Richelieu, 
in the siege and capture of Rochelle, wrested 
all political power from the Huguenots, who 
in yielding up their last stronghold became the 
more exposed to religious tyranny. Still they 
were not made to suffer materially for con¬ 
science’ sake till the next reign. It was under 
Louis XIY that they were deprived of one 
right after another, until all semblance of legal 
protection was withdrawn in the formal revo¬ 
cation of the famed edict on October 18, 1685. 
Henceforth all Protestant meetings were un- 


332 The Trend of the Centuries 

lawful. In the home, even, parents were not 
allowed to teach their own children the re¬ 
formed religion. 

Persecution became so severe that there be¬ 
gan one of the most marvelous movements in 
history. The people left the country by the 
hundred thousand. But this was prohibited. 
Soldiers guarded the frontier, and shot down 
the fugitives at sight. Or the poor hunted 
creatures, if women, were imprisoned for life; 
and, if men, were condemned to the galleys. 
They were subjected to all manner of indignities, 
and to the most exquisite refinements of tor¬ 
ture, the endeavor being to cause the longest 
possible suffering of which a human being is 
capable. Thus pursued with a relentless cruelty, 
the Huguenots, in spite of the line of soldiers 
along the frontier, in spite of this military cor¬ 
don, escaped into Germany and Switzerland 
and Holland and England and Sweden. France 
was drained of her best citizens, to the num¬ 
ber, it is claimed, of three hundred thousand. 
Her industrial interests were thus prostrated 
in the departure of numerous skilled artisans, 
who benefited other countries. 

The moral effects culminated, as most writers 
admit, a century later in the destructive French 
Revolution. With the immense emigration of 
the better elements, resulting from the revo- 


The Edict of Nantes 


333 


cation of the Edict of Nantes, there was not 
left character enough to prevent that outburst 
of godlessness and immorality, which brought 
chaos and anarchy and disaster. 

But this high-handed annulling of religious 
freedom by Louis XIY who prided himself 
on his arbitrary power, who said with a sub¬ 
lime audacity, “ I am the State ”—this unjust 
exercise of authority did not last forever. The 
grand monarch, who liked to be thought tall 
and imposing, in due season was humbled by 
death like any other mortal. Macaulay well 
says of him: “ In the grave, the most majestic 
of princes is only five feet eight” For a while 
he caused great distress to God’s people, who,^ 
however, carried their principles to every Prot¬ 
estant country of Europe, and ultimately to 
America, and we are experiencing the benefits 
of the expatriation. No incon siderable portion 
of our better American population is of Hugue¬ 
not extraction. Paul Revere, who by his his¬ 
toric midnight ride in 1775 roused the colonial 
inhabitants from Charlestown to Lexington 
and Concord to resist the British soldiers at 
the beginning of our Revolutionary War for 
national independence, was a Huguenot by 
descent. So was Peter Faneuil, who gave to 
Boston Faneuil Hall, that cradle of American 
liberty so lovingly preserved in our day be- 


334 The Trend of the Centuries 

cause of having been the place of many patri¬ 
otic gatherings in the history of our country. 
These noble men, and others like them, had the 
blood of freedom flowing through their veins 
from previous generations. Not only has 
America benefited from the French expulsion 
of the Huguenots two centuries ago, but so has 
Germany; for when, in the Franco-Prussian 
war of 1870 the Germans marched victoriously 
to the heart of France and besieged and took 
Paris, among the leading officers of the army 
thus triumphing were some who had descended 
from the hitherto expelled Frenchmen ; so com¬ 
pletely does divine providence in the course of 
time right injustice. “ Not less than eighty of 
the emperor’s staff, high in place and power,” 
says a clergyman of repute, “ were children of 
the expelled Huguenots.” And in the growth 
of the spirit of liberty France herself has now 
freedom of worship, and nearly everywhere per¬ 
secution has ceased. The Edict of Nantes 
has become well-nigh universally operative. 
Though revoked something over two hundred 
years ago, it gradually came into force again, 
until we are blessed with its benign influence, 
in that we gather freely for worship in our 
holy temples, with none to molest. To the 
Huguenots we are largely indebted for this 
great blessing, and as they were Calvinists we 


The Edict of Nantes 335 

have been having a chapter from history to the 
glory of Presbyterianism. In connection with 
this fruitage of the Reformation we think more 
especially of John Knox, who with his staunch 
Protestantism made Catholic Mary, the fas¬ 
cinating queen of Scots, weep in Holyrood 
Palace. We recall England and more partic¬ 
ularly London with its famous Abbey in whose 
Jerusalem Chamber sat and deliberated not 
only those who gave us the King James trans¬ 
lation of the Bible, and their successors who 
gave us the Revised Version of the Scriptures, 
but also those celebrated divines who there 
gathered in 1643 and in five years and a half 
completed what are known as the Presbyterian 
Standards, the immortal Westminster Confes¬ 
sion of Faith, together with the longer and 
shorter catechisms. And yet the great theo¬ 
logian of this branch of the Reformed Church 
was John Calvin, who, notwithstanding that 
he shared the limitations of his age, was an 
intellectual and moral and spiritual giant, pro¬ 
ducing, as he did, his matchless “ Institutes ” 
at the early age of twenty-six, and being, as 
he was, the inspiring genius of the French . 
Reformation which we have been considering 
in the experiences of the Huguenots, and hon¬ 
ored, as he still is, by Presbyterianism in all 
its various divisions. Because of what the 


336 The Trend of the Centuries 

French Calvinists, the Presbyterian Huguenots, 
suffered, and because of the ultimate victory 
which they gained in revolutionizing public 
sentiment as to the right of religious liberty, 
we to-day sit without a fear under oux own 
vines and fig-trees. 


CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS THE DIS¬ 
COVERER OF AMERICA 


“ I will go on by you unto Spain.”—R om. 15 : 28. 

‘ ‘ He went out, not knowing whither he went. ’ 
Hkb. 11: 8 . 


XVII 


CHRISTOPHER COLUMBUS THE DISCOVERER 
OF AMERICA 

Abraham left the seat of Oriental civiliza¬ 
tion in the valley of the Euphrates, and started 
toward the Occident. He did not know his 
exact destination, but he went in faith, believ¬ 
ing that, as Bishop Berkeley in modern times 
has said, “ Westward the course of empire 
takes its way.” The patriarch found his west 
in Palestine, which after a resplendent history 
fell into decay until Paul in his day felt that 
the hope of the future lay elsewhere than in 
that effete country whose glory had departed, 
and he went west, carrying Christianity to 
Europe, and longing to go to its most west¬ 
ern land, namely, Spain. Whether he ever 
reached that country is uncertain, but it was 
very early maintained that he did. At any 
rate, Christian civilization, which he started 
westward, did get there. 

From Spain began another movement to¬ 
ward the setting sun, and this culminated in 
the discovery of America. How that the Cas- 
339 


340 The Trend of the Centuries 

tilian government, by a brilliant campaign of 
one hundred days on the part of the United 
States, has been forever driven from the west¬ 
ern hemisphere,- we may appropriately con¬ 
sider how these Occidental possessions became 
Spain’s four centuries ago. Christopher Co¬ 
lumbus was the providential agent for the open¬ 
ing up of the new world, where the cause of 
civil and religious liberty was destined to have 
its highest development. His magnificent 
achievement would seem to have been because 
of the divine guidance. 

It seems incredible that a little over four 
hundred years ago civilized man was ignorant 
of the existence of America. To be sure, the 
discovery of this country was originally made 
by the Scandinavians about the year 1000 of 
our era, but practically 1492 marks the real 
date of the continent’s disclosure, when Co¬ 
lumbus found the new world. It was his ex¬ 
plorations which permanently opened up the 
Americas to thronging thousands. Hitherto, 
these vast continental regions with their in¬ 
numerable islands had slept for the most part 
in the sublime silence of nature. The forests 
were vocal with feathered songsters, the glens 
echoed with silver cascades, the shores were 
cannonaded as they had been for centuries by 
the billowy deep, the plains trembled beneath 


Christopher Columbus 341 

the tread of herds of buffalo, the summer air 
was full of the hum of countless insects, the 
stillness was broken by the voices of a few na¬ 
tives who roamed here and there, but after all 
there was not the noise of diversified human 
industry. Harbors were not filled with ships 
carrying the products of the globe hither and 
thither. There were no great cities whose 
pavements roared with the roll of immense 
traffic. 

How came what is now such a busy scene of 
life and commerce to be brought out of the 
oblivion of hundreds and thousands of years ? 
It was the outcome of the commendable faith 
of one remarkable man, who was destined to 
accomplish, says Prescott, “ results more stu¬ 
pendous than those which heaven has per¬ 
mitted any other mortal to achieve.” Lamar¬ 
tine says, “We know of none more perfect,” 
and, while this is excessive praise, even the 
judicial Guizot refers admiringly to “the in¬ 
domitable genius and religious faith ” of the 
subject of our sketch. 

He probably was of Genoese nativity, though 
in view of the distinction to which he subse¬ 
quently attained, no less than sixteen Italian 
towns have each claimed to be his birthplace. 
We are reminded of what is said of the blind 
bard of ancient Greece; 


342 The Trend of the Centuries 

‘ 1 Seven cities claimed the Homer dead, 

In which the living Homer begged his bread.’* 

Columbus was from boyhood religiously in¬ 
clined. Geography, navigation and astronomy 
were his favorite studies. At the early age of 
fourteen he was committed to a seafaring life. 
He changed his place of residence to Lisbon, 
the capital of Portugal, which was the great 
maritime power of the day. In his various 
naval expeditions truth compels us to say that 
he was virtually a pirate, though piracy then 
was by many considered a legitimate occupa¬ 
tion, the high seas with all they contained or 
bore being regarded as common property, 
there being no nice sense of international 
honor as at present. Marrying a Portuguese 
wife he seems in a measure to have abandoned 
his piratical cruises over the ocean, and on 
land to have given himself to the making of 
charts and maps. 

In studying these he was struck with the 
great vacant space in the Atlantic, and he 
sometimes wondered if there must not be a 
balancing continent on that side of the earth 
in whose sphericity he had come to believe. 
The globular form of this planet had been 
taught by Pythagoras in Italy as early as the 
sixth century before Christ, and had been 
learned from this source by Plato and Aris- 


Christopher Columbus 343 

totle and the Greeks, who transmitted the 
knowledge again to the Bomans, while these 
in turn convinced some of the medieval schol¬ 
ars ; and yet in the fifteenth century Colum¬ 
bus was only one of a comparatively few who 
held to the spherical shape of the earth. He 
thought accordingly that in sailing due west 
he would strike, if not Asia in its extension, at 
least, says the critical Winsor, “ other lands 
westerly quite as desirable to discover.” 

He had visions, if not of new continents, of 
undiscovered portions of land that was old. 
He dreamed of finding for the modern world 
the Biblical Ophir of ancient fame, the rich 
country whence Solomon derived gold in such 
abundance. Besides, mariners who had gone 
farthest beyond the Azores, those far-away 
islands, told strange stories of drifting 
branches of trees, of pieces of carved wood, of 
canoes consisting of single huge pines simply 
hollowed out, of tangled and tropical vegeta¬ 
tion, of floating corpses of copper-colored and 
hitherto unknown men. Columbus believed 
that these came from Asia, or possibly from 
some totally undiscovered region. But who 
would venture forth to see ? 

To the general mind the vast intervening 
expanse of water was associated with mystery 
and dread. Some thought there were bottom- 


344 The Trend of the Centuries 

less abysses, into which the waters of all 
oceans plunged over terrible cataracts. Others 
imagined a slope to the Atlantic, from which 
there could be no recovery when ships once 
got started on the watery down grade; there 
could be no return to Europe up the steep 
declivity. Still others, in their ignorance of 
how gravity acts, gravely argued that vessels 
reaching the other side of the alleged globe 
would fall from the earth down through eter¬ 
nal space. 

In spite of all these objections and obstacles, 
Columbus was eager to go forth, he knew not 
where, in search of a new world, or of an old 
world by a new route. He felt called of God 
to this enterprise. He tried to interest the 
adventurous and educated king of Portugal in 
the project, but a convened council of learned 
men pronounced his ideas chimerical. Failing 
in his negotiations with the Portuguese gov¬ 
ernment, and becoming involved in debts, as is 
supposed, he fled the country. He made his 
way into Spain, but Ferdinand and Isabella, 
the Spanish sovereigns, had other matters to 
engross their attention. 

They were busy establishing the Inquisition 
to stamp out heresy and all deviation from the 
Catholic faith, in accordance with the perse¬ 
cuting ideas of the time. They were pecunia- 


345 


Christopher Columbus 

rily crippled also by the necessity of granting 
governmental aid to portions of their realm 
devastated by the plague. Moreover, they 
reigned at a period of great financial strin¬ 
gency because of a depreciated currency. And 
particularly did their conflict with the Moors 
tax to the utmost the royal resources, for they 
carried to a triumphant close a struggle that 
had lasted for nearly eight hundred years. 
They finally saw the crescent go down, while 
the cross was planted in its place on the high¬ 
est tower of the splendid Alhambra, whose 
ruins, even, are to-day beautiful to behold, the 
admiration of all travelers. When Columbus 
secured an interview with the rulers who were 
so much occupied, “ he felt himself kindled as 
with a fire from on high,” to quote his own 
language, “ and considered himself as an agent 
chosen by heaven to accomplish a great design.” 

But the general incredulity as to his funda¬ 
mental position, that the earth was spherical, 
led to his being regarded as visionary. He 
contemplated returning permanently, as he did 
temporarily, to Portugal, whose king promised 
him immunity from all suits of a criminal or 
civil nature. He received an overture from 
Henry YII of England, where his brother 
Bartholomew had made known his plan, but 
he at last resolved to go to France. He set 


346 The Trend of the Centuries 

out with his son Diego, begging his bread by 
the way, and trudging along on foot. He 
sought refreshment at a monastery, where he 
enlisted the interest of a friendly friar, who 
formerly had been confessor to the Spanish 
queen, and who despatched to her a messenger, 
and who himself in response was summoned 
into her presence. He spoke with such effect 
that the attendance of Columbus on the court 
was next commanded by the gracious Isabella 
at Granada. He arrived there in time to see 
the Alhambra pass forever from Moorish into 
Christian hands, and with much hope submitted 
his proposition. 

Columbus proposed to enter upon the enter¬ 
prise unfolded on condition of being made 
admiral and viceroy over all that he might 
discover, and on condition of being allowed 
one-tenth of the resulting revenues. His de¬ 
mands were pronounced excessive, and he re¬ 
tired with the full intention of negotiating 
with the French government. He mounted a 
mule and rode away, but some of his court 
friends set forth to the queen the small cost 
and the possibly large gain of accepting the 
navigator’s terms, and, following their advice, 
Isabella had a swift herald intercept him in his 
journey, with the announcement that his 
stipulations would be met. 


Christopher Columbus 347 

The resources of the government were not 
abundant after the very expensive war just 
closed, but Isabella felt that the requisite 
means would be forthcoming. It was in this 
emergency that Ferdinand was said to have 
demurred on account of the cost of the under¬ 
taking in the depleted condition of the treasury, 
and that her Majesty was said to have come to 
the rescue with the generous offer, “I will 
pawn my diamonds and jewels to meet the ex¬ 
penses of the expedition.” Recent researches 
pronounce this incident in its literalness apoc¬ 
ryphal, but there is no questioning the fact 
that the needed money was taken from the 
chest of the king only on the condition of its 
restoration, if such should be the royal wish, 
from the exchequer of the queen. The requis¬ 
ite funds were, therefore, to all intents and pur¬ 
poses, a loan from the monarch with his wife’s 
resources as security, and she deserves all the 
credit that would have inhered in an actual 
pledging of her valuables. 

There were still provoking delays, but on 
Friday, August 3 , 1492 , three small vessels with 
one hundred and twenty souls sailed forth, 
after prayers and tears, for Columbus was go¬ 
ing he knew not where, except that he was 
going to seek a country with the belief that 
he was divinely guided. By faith he started 


348 The Trend of the Centuries 

on that long and perilous voyage, when he was 
perhaps forty-six or forty-seven years old. 

Following him on the ocean, his faith ap¬ 
pears to a still greater advantage. He had to 
put into the Canaries for repairs, and there a 
volcanic island frightened the sailors, as it 
emitted fire which to their excited imagina¬ 
tions seemed to form a flaming sword, and 
only by scientific explanations could their 
fears be allayed by their intrepid leader, who 
talked to them and gave them the physical 
causes of an eruption. Then the magnetic 
needle began to deflect from the hitherto in¬ 
variable north, and the superstitious mariners 
felt that even nature was turning against them. 
Though Columbus himself was inwardly dis¬ 
turbed by the variation, he remained out¬ 
wardly calm, and because he could think of no 
other cause he solemnly attributed it to new 
stars revolving around the pole, and talked 
with such an air of wisdom, that his ignorant 
followers were again quieted. 

On they glided over tranquil seas and 
under dreamy skies, and, to encourage them, 
there appeared the seaweed of an ocean that 
was apparently getting shallow. But no land 
was sighted, though more than once they were 
deceived by clouds which in the distance 
seemed like cliffs and mountains. They were 


349 


Christopher Columbus 

also cheered one evening by beautiful birds 
(which ordinarily nest in shrubs) warbling 
their songs among the masts with no sense of 
weariness as if from a long flight, and by 
sparrows (which make their homes around 
human abodes) being seen. 

There succeeded tropical calms and strange 
currents, and though there was no wind the 
ocean seemed to heave as from submarine 
volcanoes. The sailors feared they were near¬ 
ing the deep, dark abysses, into which all 
waters were fabled to pour with a rush and 
roar, when their attention was pleasantly di¬ 
verted by a cry of land in sight. The seeming 
shore proved to be another illusion, and they 
rolled on as before over the monotonous deep, 
and Columbus himself was somewhat disheart¬ 
ened. In the midst of his anxiety the smallest 
vessel hoisted the signal of sighted land, and 
fired a gun to announce the tidings, but it 
turned out to be only another cloud bank. 
The navigator now changed his course and 
followed the birds in their flight, and after 
hope deferred had again made the heart sick, 
we read of his spirits reviving at the appear¬ 
ance of^ rushes recently torn up, a carved 
stick, a branch of hawthorn in blossom, and 
a broken bough with a bird’s nest full of eggs 
upon which the mother was serenely sitting 


350 The Trend of the Centuries 

and riding unconscious of danger over gently 
undulating waves. 

Night, however, came on with no land in 
view. All were anxious, and none slept. 
They gazed through the darkness for some 
shore. At midnight Columbus, walking the 
deck and sweeping the horizon, fancied he saw 
a light rise and fall. He asked another to look, 
and still another, and both agreed with him 
that there surely was a flickering light in the 
distance. The three kept the secret to them¬ 
selves, not wishing to stir false hopes, and by 
and by the light disappeared, and Columbus 
watched till two o’clock in the morning. He 
prayed as well as watched. Presently he heard 
a cannon-shot from one of the ships in advance 
of the other two, and he thanked God for the 
confident cry this time of “ Land ahead! ” 

Sails were furled, and all waited anxiously 
for the break of day. There certainly was the 
sound of breakers on a beach, and there was 
the unmistakable scent of soil and woods near 
by, like “the smell of Lebanon.” With the 
dawn arose to the sight an island from the sea, 
one of the Bahamas, with green forests of 
stately trees, with queer huts resembling bee¬ 
hives, with blue, curling smoke ascending on 
high, and with half-nude natives peering out 
from their hiding-places, and concluding that 


Christopher Columbus 351 

the ships with swelling, breathing sails were 
things of life which had flown down on their 
white wings from the crystal skies to bring the 
sons of the gods in the finely-appareled and 
white-faced Europeans who seemed worthy of 
being worshiped. Columbus gazed at the 
fairylike scene, and then with an escort 
landed, on Friday, October 12, or October 
21 , new style. He fell on his knees, kissed 
the ground and wept tears of joy. He uttered 
a solemn and glad prayer, erected the cross 
and the flag of Spain, and took possession of 
the virgin soil in the name of his sovereigns 
and of his Saviour. 

It is needless to speak of Cuba and the other 
islands which he discovered, islands of enchant¬ 
ing beauty, with birds of azure and purple 
plumage, with brilliant flowers of sweetest 
fragrance, with tropical fruits and with per¬ 
fumes of spices, with “ luminous insects ” by 
night, until the great navigator said, “ It is 
impossible to think of misery or death in such 
a place.” It only remained to return and 
report; but terrific storms marked the voyage 
back, and Columbus, fully expecting to find a 
watery grave, wanted to preserve his splendid 
discovery. He wrote on parchment an ac¬ 
count of the voyage, wrapped the precious 
document in waxed cloths, encased it in wood, 


352 The Trend of the Centuries 

and committed it to the waves in the hope of 
its being washed ashore even if he perished. 
Another copy of his narrative he left in the 
vessel, to survive, possibly, his not unlikely 
drowning. 

But he was providentially spared to see 
the country from which he had sailed, and 
straightway he and his followers proceeded to 
church to render devout thanksgiving to Al¬ 
mighty God. Then came that grand trium¬ 
phal procession through Spain, with painted 
Indians the astonishment of all, with rare 
birds and plants and precious stones and 
golden ornaments borne conspicuously along. 
The king and queen rose from their throne to 
do honor to Columbus, while at the recital 
of truth that was stranger than fiction there 
flowed royal tears of satisfaction and pride, 
the Te Deum was chanted by the chapel choir, 
and to God there rose songs of praise in which 
both Ferdinand and Isabella joined. The tri¬ 
umph was complete; it was the victory of 
faith. 

“ By faith ” Columbus “ went out, not know¬ 
ing whither he went,” except that he was seek¬ 
ing a country; and he was gloriously rewarded. 
He knew not whither he went, for to his dying 
day he supposed that he had discovered the 
other side of India, and hence he called the 


Christopher Columbus 353 

natives Indians. His expectation was not 
realized in seeing the inhabitants of this new 
world Christianized, and yet there was to 
arise on these shores a Christian nation more 
glorious than ever entered into his most glow¬ 
ing conceptions. The marvelous results of his 
faith we all do see. 

After three more voyages the great naviga¬ 
tor died on Spanish soil, May 20, 1506 , about 
sixty years of age, according to the later date 
assigned for his birth. He was not perfect. 
He shared the moral debasement of his age, 
but he showed penitence in that he remembered 
in his will the Spanish woman who bore him 
his son Fernando, the bequest being accom¬ 
panied by these words, “ Let this be done for 
the discharge of my conscience, for it weighs 
heavy on my soul.” He had an inordinate 
desire for gold, which allured him on from 
island to island; but there is this alleviating 
circumstance, that he intended to dedicate part 
of the wealth for which he sought to the re¬ 
covery of Jerusalem and the Holy Sepulchre 
from the infidels whom the crusaders had not 
been able to conquer and dislodge. 

He made slaves of the islanders, who at first 
gave him a warm welcome, but guns and blood¬ 
hounds soon made the friendly natives hostile, 
and there followed a long train of woes from 


354 The Trend of the Centuries 

the cruel policy of human bondage which he 
inaugurated against the protest of the kindly 
Isabella. Here also we must bear in mind 
that he lived in the fifteenth century, and not 
in the nineteenth with its new light upon the 
sum of all villainies. He systematically pre¬ 
varicated, reporting on his voyage the daily 
progress less than it actually was, giving as a 
reason in his journal, “that the crew might 
not be discouraged, if the voyage should prove 
too long.” Shipwrecked on the northern coast 
of Jamaica, and not receiving needed supplies 
from the unfriendly islanders, and knowing 
from his astronomical information that an 
eclipse of the moon was soon to take place, on 
the night of February 29 , 1504 , he informed 
the natives that the Great Spirit was about to 
show his displeasure at their inhospitality by 
an obscuration of the moon, and since the 
eclipse came at the exact time he had named, 
they were greatly frightened, and promised 
him everything he wanted. Just before the 
satellite was to emerge from the shadow, he 
assured them that the removal of the divine 
wrath would presently be indicated by the 
clear shining again of the moon, and when the 
sign foretold did occur, his sway over them 
was complete; but it was gained by trickery 
not consistent with the highest character. 


Christopher Columbus 355 

He was not deserving of the chains in which 
he was returned to Spain from his third voy¬ 
age, but there was much misrule on his part in 
the new regions over which he had absolute 
dominion. And yet tyranny was not an un¬ 
common vice in his age. He may have been 
unduly exalted by Prescott and Irving and 
others of the earlier writers, but he was better 
than his detractor, Justin Winsor, would have 
us think. A World’s Fair in his honor in 
Chicago, an American city, just four hundred 
years after his great discovery, was eminently 
proper. He was one of those providential men 
of history, born to introduce a new and more 
splendid era than the past has known, to pro¬ 
duce something grand for posterity. The 
Spanish Castelar well said, “ America was dis¬ 
covered because Columbus possessed a living 
faith in his ideal, in himself, and in his God ! ” 

His remains have had a singular history. 
His testamentary wish, to have the fetters 
with which he was shamefully loaded buried 
with him, may not have been met, but his 
further desire, to be laid to rest on an island 
which he had discovered, was carried out after 
he had slept for some years in Spanish soil. 
The government of Spain exhumed him and 
reburied him under the floor of the cathedral 
at San Domingo, where later were interred his 


356 The Trend of the Centuries 

son Diego and a grandson Luis. But in 1795, 
France obtained by treaty from Spain the 
western portion of the island which contained 
the Columbian mausoleum. The Spaniards nat¬ 
urally wanted the body of their illustrious dis¬ 
coverer, and therefore the cathedral floor was 
lifted, a vault was found and opened, and a 
leaden box with the supposed remains of Co¬ 
lumbus (though no inscription was noticed) 
was enclosed in a gilded sarcophagus, which 
on January 19,1796, with great ceremony was 
conveyed to Havana, Cuba, and placed near 
the high altar of the cathedral there. 

In 1877, during some repairs on the San 
Domingo cathedral, the two other Columbian 
graves were opened, and from the inscriptions 
and other evidence, such as the presence in 
one coffin of a musket ball—which very nat¬ 
urally may be thought to be the one the great 
navigator was known to have borne in his 
body during life because of a reference he once 
makes to his “ wound breaking out afresh ”— 
for reasons like this the belief prevails with 
good authorities (though some dissent), that 
the body of the son Diego was the one mis¬ 
takenly removed to Cuba in 1796, while those 
left were the grandson Luis and Columbus 
himself. Thus, after all, it is thought that 
Columbus’ body lies at San Domingo, never 


Christopher Columbus 357 

really having been transferred to Havana. Re¬ 
cently the alleged remains at Havana, because 
of the American conquest of Cuba, have been 
conveyed across the sea to the mother country, 
whence the discoverer sailed more than four 
centuries since. 

The Columbian monument erected in the 
Cuban city in 1822 would also seem to be 
misplaced, but that matters little, for the true 
memorial of Christopher Columbus is this 
whole double western continent of North and 
South America. If in St. Paul’s cathedral of 
London, that architectural product of the mas¬ 
sive brain of Sir Christopher Wren who de¬ 
signed the noble structure which required 
thirty-five years for its building,—if in that 
grand temple the worshiper can be told, “ If 
you wish to see his monument, look around 
you ” (Si monumentum requiris , circumspice ), 
much more can all Americans feel with refer¬ 
ence to Columbus, that if they wish to see his 
monument they do not need to go to Spain or 
San Domingo or Havana or a Columbian Ex¬ 
position, even; they have only to look around 
and see his enduring memorial in the mighty 
republic of the United States and in all the 
other nations that have grown to greatness in 
the new world which was discovered four hun¬ 
dred years ago. 


THE PILGEIMS: THE COMING OF THE 
MAYFLOWER 


“These all died in faith, not having received the prom¬ 
ises, but having seen them and greeted them from afar, and 
having confessed that they were strangers and pilgrims on 
the earth.”— Heb. 11: 13. 


XVIII 


THE PILGRIMS: THE COMING OF THE 
MAYFLOWER 

Forefathers’ Day, which commemorates 
the landing of the Pilgrims at Plymouth Eock 
on December 21, 1620, is an anniversary that 
is being increasingly observed. The coming 
of the Mayflower will ever have for the hu¬ 
man mind a romantic interest. In considering 
the movement which thus culminated, we are 
carried back, strictly speaking, to the apostolic 
age. 

At the outset, it would seem, churches were 
voluntary associations of believers in different 
localities, with but little organization, and that 
democratic in nature, the entire congregation 
having a vote. That accounts for the descrip¬ 
tive title of the religious denomination, whose 
beginnings we are to trace, namely, the Con- 
gregationalists. These do not appear by name 
in the Bible, as the Baptists do in John the 
Baptist, or as Episcopal bodies do in the “ bish¬ 
ops ” of the Xew Testament, or as the Presby¬ 
terians do in the laying on of the hands of 
“ presbytery.” But they do appear in the Xew 
361 


362 The Trend of the Centuries 

Testament, if not by name, at least in their 
principles, in that when the first deacons were 
elected, we read that the choice was made by 
the “ whole multitude ” of disciples, the entire 
congregation thus having a voice in the matter. 

Then as to the relations between the various 
churches, there was apparently no organic 
unity, but rather a community of sentiment, 
a fellowship of feeling, and of course a sub¬ 
stantial agreement of views. Naturally, as the 
years went on, organization became more and 
more compacted, with a regular gradation of 
officers in each separate church, and with well- 
defined bodies for the meeting together of the 
different churches. This systemization con¬ 
tinued, till, when Christianity upon the conver¬ 
sion of Constantine (312 a. d.) became the 
dominant religion in the Roman empire, the 
crystallization into forms had so far advanced 
that the church government was the stately 
episcopal. Power was more and more concen¬ 
trated in the clergy, who ranked according to 
the importance of the cities where they offi¬ 
ciated, Rome standing at the head. Thus was 
gradually formed the papal system, as com¬ 
plete in all its ramifications as any political 
organization. 

It became tyrannical and corrupt in its 
sway, and that brought on the Reformation of 


The Pilgrims 363 

Luther and of others like-minded. This was 
an attempt to get back to gospel simplicity and 
purity. The effort was only partially success¬ 
ful. Church and State were so interlocked in 
those times, that ecclesiastical and political 
revolutions had to go hand in hand. Hence in 
Germany Luther and Frederick the Wise were 
inseparable, and reformation meant both reli¬ 
gious and civil freedom from him whose throne 
was among the seven hills of Rome. That is 
to say, national churches were broken off from 
the huge hierarchy which ruled Europe. 
Henry VIII thus swung England away from 
the papacy, and the Anglican Church was the 
result, national in its scope and episcopal in its 
form. 

It was argued that this was an improvement, 
from popery to episcopacy, but there were 
those in England who felt that the reforma¬ 
tion had not gone far enough. They wanted 
the purifying process to proceed, and they 
talked so much about purity that they were 
called Puritans. Some of them came to be¬ 
lieve that a little of the lay element should be 
introduced into church government. They 
wanted the church to be ruled, not simply by 
bishops but also by a session of elders. These 
were Presbyterians. Their aim, however, 
was to accomplish their purpose within the 


364 The Trend of the Centuries 

Church. They hoped to convert the national 
organization from the episcopal to the pres- 
byterial form, but it should still be the estab¬ 
lished Church. 

The agitation went on, until some became 
so radical as to question whether the whole 
idea of nationalism in religion was not unscrip- 
tural, and once upon that line of thought they 
did not stop till they had very positive convic¬ 
tions. They were for a still further reforma¬ 
tion; to have no national Church, but local 
churches, voluntary associations of believers 
here and throughout the realm. As they 
could not bring the Church of England to see 
as they did, they called upon all within its 
communion who shared their views to come 
out, according to the New Testament com¬ 
mand, and be “ separate,” and they insisted so 
much upon separation that they were named 
Separatists, and sometimes Brownists, or Bar- 
rowists, from this or that prominent leader. 
They were really Congregationalists, and that 
is how they came into being. They thought 
the step from Popery to Episcopacy good, 
from Episcopacy to Presbyterianism better, 
but best of all would be a return to gospel 
democracy itself, with the “ whole multitude ” 
of disciples having a voice in the deliberative 
assembly of believers. 


The Pilgrims 365 

Accordingly those early Congregationalists 
were for “ reformation,” as one of them 
(Robert Browne) expressed it, “ without tarry¬ 
ing,” and they were not satisfied, as another 
of them (Henry Barrowe) said, to “ give the 
people a little liberty to sweeten their 
mouths ”; they wanted to give them their full 
rights. This was the cherished aim of the 
Pilgrim Fathers, who did not see their hopes 
as entirely realized as they could have wished, 
but who did look forward to a glorious future 
wherein their grand ideals should be wrought 
out. “ These all died in faith, not having re¬ 
ceived the promises, but having seen them and 
greeted them from afar, and having confessed 
that they were strangers and pilgrims on the 
earth.” 

Let us trace the steps by which, through great 
struggles, they advanced toward what they 
saw by faith. Their reformatory movement 
was feeble enough in its inception, for there 
was only now and then one who was radical and 
courageous enough to stand by his convictions. 
A few there were who came out and were 
“ separate,” and they were persecuted. They 
were branded as a “ wicked set,” holding 
“ wicked opinions.” They had to meet in 
private houses and “ in the fields,” and 
even then they were hunted down. They 


366 The Trend of the Centuries 

were thrust into prison, where, they declare, 
they were rifled of their “ papers and writ¬ 
ings ” ; where, they assert, their quarters were 
“ miserable and close ”; where they were 
“ grievously beaten with cudgels ” ; and where, 
according to their own testimony, there were 
“men and women, young and old, lying in 
cold, in hunger,” till many of them died. 

At every appeal of theirs for liberty, or for 
a trial, they were only worse treated. More 
and more repressive measures were adopted, 
until the aid of the secular government was 
called in to make a summary example of some 
who in their imprisonment dared to write and 
send forth what were called “ seditious books,” 
although the sedition was only frankly avowed 
Congregationalism. That, however, was 
enough to condemn, and two of the leaders, 
Barrowe and Greenwood, were hanged, though 
they certainly did not deserve such a fate. 
John Penry was also arrested for being “ a 
seditious disturber of her majesty’s peaceable 
government” (it was in the reign of Queen 
Elizabeth). His sedition consisted chiefly, 
to quote exactly, of “ his schismatical separa¬ 
tion from the society of the Church of Eng¬ 
land,” and for this, one day about sunset, the 
hangman’s noose was adjusted about his neck, 
and he was swung off into eternity. These 


The Pilgrims 367 

three martyrs dangled from the shameful 
gallows because they were Congregational- 
ists. 

It was because of such persecutions that a 
.small company of Separatists, to the north of 
London, the scene of these hangings, resolved 
to seek refuge in a foreign land. Holland was 
the country decided upon, to whose city of 
Amsterdam many exiles from London and 
Gainsborough had already fled. The Scrooby 
colonists (who had been an offshoot from the 
little band at Gainsborough) made all their 
arrangements for the voyage across the sea to 
another shore, where they would have to learn 
a new language, and enter upon unaccustomed 
employments, for they were going from a 
pastoral to a manufacturing place. The ad¬ 
venture did seem desperate, but they were not 
dismayed. They engaged a vessel, and had 
embarked upon it, when it was boarded by 
soldiers who drove them off, stripped them of 
their possessions, and subjected them to other 
indignities. 

In about six months the refugees made an¬ 
other attempt to escape, choosing an obscure 
point for their departure, and selecting a ship 
that flew the Dutch flag. Only part of them 
had gone aboard, when, at sight of a British 
force approaching, the captain took fright and 


368 The Trend of the Centuries 

sailed away as fast as he could. The colonists 
were thus divided, and those who were bear¬ 
ing out to sea had nothing with them but the 
clothes they wore; and, what was worse, hus¬ 
bands and wives, and parents and children, 
were separated, and consternation and tears 
ruled the hour. Meanwhile those who were 
carried away were driven northward by a 
tempest, and the voyage, ordinarily of a few 
hours, was lengthened into one of fourteen 
days, half of the time sun, moon and stars be¬ 
ing invisible; but God brought them at last 
to the “ desired haven,” whither those who had 
been left behind followed, one by one, and by 
groups and families. Great was the rejoicing of 
reunited households which had been separated 
in the fright occasioned by the appearance of 
British troops tracking the refugees. Who 
were these that had to flee from their country 
like criminals from justice ? They were Con- 
gregationalists, who, believing in freedom of 
worship and in religious democracy, under¬ 
went for these all sorts of hardships. They did 
not receive the promises, but only “greeted 
them from afar.” 

They were now in very truth “ strangers 
and pilgrims on the earth,” and after a short 
stay at Amsterdam their pilgrimage was con 
tinued forty miles inland to Leyden, where 


The Pilgrims 369 

was located the famous university, and where 
a fine tablet was erected to their memory in 
the summer of 1891 by representative Ameri¬ 
can Christians who admire the spirit and who 
have inherited the faith of the Pilgrims. 
There the forefathers settled down to earning 
their living, though not, says Bradford, one of 
their number, without seeing “ the grim and 
grisly face of poverty ”; but they were, he 
adds, “ armed with faith and patience.” They 
had the satisfaction of being religious freemen, 
and they had “much sweet and delightful so¬ 
ciety and spiritual comfort together.” John 
Robinson, who was to become so celebrated 
and of whom particularly the Leyden tablet is 
a memorial, was their beloved pastor. He 
was as much the religious progenitor of Con- 
gregationalists as John Calvin or John Knox 
is of Presbyterians and John Wesley of Metho¬ 
dists. 

Still, they were strangers in a strange land. 
They did not feel settled, they still hoped for 
a change in the English policy, such that they 
could return to their native country. But as 
this became more and more improbable, and 
since their extinction by absorption where they 
were was only a matter of time, it was only 
natural that their eyes should turn toward 
some of England’s colonial possessions in order 


370 The Trend of the Centuries 

that their children might remain English and 
not become Dutch. America was the rising 
hope, and thither after long debate they de¬ 
termined to go, where they could lay, as it 
was expressed, a “ good foundation ” for the 
future. All could not go, at least at once, on 
account of the expense, but a goodly number 
sold off their possessions and bargained with 
an English company for the voyage, not, like 
the former, across the narrow British channel 
to a civilized people, but across the great At¬ 
lantic Ocean to a land of wild savages. It 
was a hazardous enterprise, but they entered 
upon it cheerfully. 

Before the departure a day of prayer was 
appointed, and pastor Robinson preached from 
the text (Ezra 8: 21, Geneva Version), and no 
passage could have been more appropriate, “ I 
proclaimed a fast, that we might humble our¬ 
selves before our God, and seek of him a right 
way for us, and for our children, and for all 
our substance.” It was a solemn meeting, and 
was followed by a gathering at the pastor’s 
house, where many tearful words were ex¬ 
changed. 

The Pilgrims started, leaving behind “the 
goodly and pleasant city ” of Leyden, where 
they had lived for twelve years. They cast 
loving farewell glances back, “ but,” said Brad- 


The Pilgrims 371 

ford, “they knew they were pilgrims, and 
looked not much on those things, but lifted up 
their eyes to the heavens, their dearest coun¬ 
try, and quieted their spirits.” They were ac¬ 
companied by friends to Delfshaven, a mile 
and a half southwest of Rotterdam, where they 
were to take ship to England, and thence sail 
for America. The farewells were spoken on 
the Holland shore, except where emotions were 
too deep for expression, and then there were 
silent embraces with convulsive sobs. The 
salute for departure was fired, whereupon all 
kneeled and were led in prayer with tremulous 
voice by pastor Robinson, who commended 
them tenderly to the God ruling wind and 
wave. Then the vessel, the Speedwell, spread 
her sails, and, amid waving adieus which 
brought tears to the eyes of even observing 
strangers, the Pilgrims bore out to sea. They 
had not yet received the promises, but they 
“ greeted them from afar ”; they looked for¬ 
ward to better things. They doubtless re¬ 
membered Robinson’s parting and yet hopeful 
charge, which contained the well known 
words: “ I am verily persuaded the Lord has 
more truth yet to break forth out of his Holy 
Word” 

They reached Southampton, England, where 
they were to be joined by others. There were 


372 The Trend of' the Centuries 

vexatious delays, there were two starts, and 
two returns with landings here and there, be¬ 
cause one of the ships, the Speedwell, proved 
leaky. At last, the Speedwell having been 
properly retired from service in Plymouth 
harbor, all but twenty of those who had been 
in the two boats were crowded into one, the 
Mayflower, of one hundred and eighty tons 
as against a twelve thousand tonnage and 
upward at present in our great ocean flyers, 
and with one hundred and two on board she 
sailed, September 16 , 1620 , for New England. 

Little did those Pilgrims realize what mighty 
destinies were bound up in their humble lives. 
They were not the great of the earth. They 
were so poor that they had to submit to the 
hardest kind of a bargain with the English 
capitalists, who made the necessary pecuniary 
loans. It was a joint stock affair. A money 
share was ten pounds, not quite fifty dollars, 
and each adult passenger was put in as a 
share, while a person between ten and sixteen 
years of age counted for only half a share. 
Moreover, those Pilgrims were to contribute 
their services for seven years to the company. 
All the profits of the enterprise for that period 
were to go into the general fund, and in the 
end the Pilgrim who contracted his services 
for seven years’ hard labor in an unbroken 


The Pilgrims 373 

wilderness was to get no more than the Lon¬ 
don capitalist who put in fifty dollars and en¬ 
joyed himself in the metropolis of the world. 
It was really a boat-load of bond slaves, who 
for conscience’ sake were seeking a better 
country. It was the First Congregational 
Church of America, destined in the subsequent 
union of Puritans and Pilgrims to found Har¬ 
vard and ’Yale, and to develop in general into 
a great nation, and more specifically into a re¬ 
ligious denomination, which to-day numbers 
more than six hundred thousand communi¬ 
cants, besides a more than ordinarily influen¬ 
tial supporting constituency. The Pilgrim 
Fathers did not live to see the full develop¬ 
ment, but they were expectant of a great 
future, which they sufficiently realized to make 
Bradford say in later years, “ Out of small be¬ 
ginnings, great things have been produced; 
and as one small candle may light a thousand, 
so the light here kindled hath shone to many, 
yea, in some sort to our whole nation.” 

The long voyage is familiar to all, with the 
“fierce storms” cracking the main-beam, 
which only with difficulty was forced back to 
its place and spiked with a “ great iron screw.” 
Ofl Cape Cod, on November 21st, was the sign¬ 
ing of the Mayflower compact, that magna 
charta of American liberty. There was a 


374 The Trend of the Centuries 

month’s prospecting, and then in bleak De¬ 
cember of 1620, in the face of a driving storm 
of snow and sleet, there was the anchoring at 
Clark’s Island where the holy Sabbath was 
passed, while on December 21st there came 
the final landing, which has been sung by 
many a poet, Mrs. Hemans, for instance, say¬ 
ing: 

“The breaking waves dashed high 
On a stern and rock-bound coast. 

And the woods against a stormy sky 
Their giant branches tossed; 

And the heavy night hung dark 
The hills and waters o’er, 

When a band of exiles moored their bark 
On the wild New England shore.” 


With what gladness did the Pilgrims, after 
the clearing of the sky, ascend that rising 
ground, where they not only saw the “very 
sweet brook ” running “ under the hillside,” 
but where also, said Bradford, they had a 
commanding view “ into the bay, and far into 
the sea.” One can better enter into their joy¬ 
ful feelings after standing on the same rise of 
ground, and putting his foot upon a preserved 
fragment of the rock, and walking over the 
whole historic place. He can then see why 
they were so much pleased with the locality. 

But there came that first terrible winter, 


The Pilgrims 375 

during which half of the hundred died from 
exposure and hardship, among the dead being 
the governor who was succeeded by Bradford. 
They did not even have enough to eat; on one 
occasion, says Baylie’s memoir of the colony, 
being “ reduced to a pint of corn, which, being 
equally divided, gave to each a portion of five 
kernels, which were parched and eaten.” They 
had, as Longfellow says, “plenty of nothing 
but gospel.” But they did not succumb to the 
adverse circumstances, for as the same poet 
has said, 

“Giants in heart they were, who believed in God and the 
Bible.” 

The simple, contented lives which they lived 
in the wilds of New England, and yet the real 
heroism which they displayed amid dangers 
from howling wolf and the treacherous, savage 
Indian,—these have been celebrated in the 
charming story of Miles Standish. But we 
are apt to dwell upon only the bright side of 
the picture, recalling, for instance, John Alden, 

“Stamping the snow from his feet as he entered the house, 
and Priscilla 

Laughed at his snowy locks, and gave him a seat by the 
fireside. ’ 1 

We forget the darker picture which the brave 


376 The Trend of the Centuries 

and yet sorrowful captain drew, when he said 
so pathetically: 

“Yonder there, on the hill by the sea, lies buried Rose 
Standish ; 

Beautiful rose of love, that bloomed for me by the wayside! 
She was the first to die of all who came in the Mayflower! 
Green above her is growing the field of wheat we have sown 
there, 

Better to hide from the Indian scouts the graves of our peo- 
ple, 

Lest they should count them and see how many already have 
perished. ’ ’ 

Those were dark days indeed for the be¬ 
reaved colonists, who buried half their number 
that first winter, but they persevered in the 
hope of a magnificent future, which they did 
not live to see, but which they “ greeted from 
afar.” That which they anticipated was theirs 
in part and is ours much more largely. More 
than six hundred thousand members of Con¬ 
gregational churches in the United States to¬ 
day, the most prominent colleges of the East, 
the great Baptist denomination with its demo¬ 
cratic church polity, and seventy-five millions 
of people who are being molded by New Eng¬ 
land influence, look back with gratitude to the 
hole of the pit whence they have been digged, 
as Isaiah says, and to the rock whence they 
have been hewn. Plymouth Rock, with its 
sacred associations, will never be forgotten. 


JOHN WESLEY THE FOUNDER OF 
METHODISM 


“Thou shalt call his name John. And thou shalt have 
joy and gladness ; and many shall rejoice at his birth. For 
he shall be great in the sight of the Lord, and he shall drink 
no wine nor strong drink ; and he shall be filled with the 
Holy Ghost. ’ ’• -Luke 1:13-15. 


XIX 


JOHN WESLEY THE FOUNDER OF METHODISM 

John Wesley, the founder of Methodism, 
died March 2, 1791. Exactly a century from 
that date a statue was erected to his memory 
in London, near where he died, and the eminent 
churchman and author, Archdeacon Farrar, 
made the chief address, while the news was 
cabled round the world. About eight feet 
high the statue stands, and represents him with 
one hand outstretched toward an imaginary 
audience and with the other holding a Bible. 

He left seventy thousand followers in the 
United Kingdom, and nearly as many more in 
America and elsewhere, but now six million 
Methodists of the various branches, or prob¬ 
ably twenty million adherents of Methodism, 
rejoice in his memory, and Christians of all 
faiths share in the joy, for a religious move¬ 
ment of such prodigious growth Avithin a 
century and a half since its very first incep¬ 
tion is deserving of the Avidest recognition and 
the heartiest congratulation. As Protestant¬ 
ism was both an advance in itself and also re- 
379 


380 The Trend of the Centuries 

acted beneficially upon Catholicism, so can it 
be said first of the Pilgrims and Puritans and 
then of the Wesleyans as regards the Anglican 
Church, whose membership now quite gener¬ 
ally acknowledges and appreciates the bene¬ 
fits of both these offshoots from the parent 
branch. Born at Epworth, England, in 1703, 
and dying in London in 1791, John Wesley’s 
life covers most of the eighteenth century. 

What was the nature of this century in 
which Methodism was given its unique setting 
by its renowned founder ? There was a very 
low state of religion and of morals. The 
Anglican Church was noted for “ eminent re¬ 
spectability ” rather than for warm spirituality. 
For the great glowing truths of grace, tepid 
ethical platitudes had been substituted in the 
pulpit. Christianity was on the defensive 
rather than the offensive. Dissenters also had 
become formal and frigid. Presbyterianism, 
to-day in this country the bulwark of ortho¬ 
doxy, had become largely Unitarian. The 
other Nonconforming bodies had also drifted 
from evangelical moorings. 

There were some earnest spirits, some true 
representatives of a warm gospel. The Inde¬ 
pendents or Congregationalists had their Dod¬ 
dridge who produced the much read “ Rise and 
Progress of Religion in the Soul,” and Watts 


John Wesley 381 

who wrote so many of the hymns yet in use. 
Baptists had their Andrew Fuller and Robert 
Hall. Even the Establishment had its Bishop 
Berkeley, and better still its Paley whose 
“ Hours With Paul,” showing the undesigned 
coincidences between the Acts of Luke and 
the Epistles of the Apostle, and whose “ Evi¬ 
dences of Christianity ” and “ Natural Theo¬ 
logy ” have been classics in their line. Then, 
it must never be forgotten that the eighteenth 
century originated Sunday-schools through 
Robert Raikes, and foreign missions through 
William Carey; that it is luminous with the 
names of Pope and Addison and Goldsmith 
and Johnson and Gray and Cowper and Pitt 
and Burke and Wilberforce. 

Nevertheless, the prevailing spirit was one 
of exceptional worldliness and wickedness. 
Among the higher classes there were rank infi¬ 
delity and the greatest profligacy. We have 
only to mention, as types of the age, Hume 
with his attacks upon miracles and the whole 
idea of a supernatural religion, Gibbon with his 
polished shafts of cynicism directed against 
Christianity, and Bolingbroke with his brilliant 
skepticism. Fielding and Smollett as novelists 
pandered in their writings to vicious tastes 
and sensual instincts. Butler in his celebrated 
“ Analogy,” which continues to be studied in our 


382 The Trend of the Centuries 

institutions of learning, said that it had “come 
to be taken for granted that Christianity is not 
so much as a subject of inquiry ; but that it is 
now at length discovered to be fictitious.” 
Dean Swift, himself anything but a model, 
said in 1709, “ Hardly one in a hundred among 
our people of quality or gentry appears to act 
by any principle of religion; nor,” he adds, 
“is the case much better with the vulgar.” 
Indeed, among the lower classes profanity and 
intemperance and unchastity were fearfully 
prevalent, and sober writers believe that had 
not the Wesleyan movement arisen to check 
lawlessness and immorality among the masses, 
there would have occurred in England at the 
close of the eighteenth century what did hap¬ 
pen in France with its Voltaire, a terrible 
revolution striking at the very foundations of 
society and government and religion. 

There was shocking irreverence everywhere. 
A very characteristic incident, as illustrating 
the spirit of the times, is that related by 
Doddridge in a letter to Wesley. A lord 
quartered himself and his officers at a Scotch 
minister’s house, and compelled the clergyman 
and the eldest son to wait upon them at the 
table, while with mock seriousness the irre¬ 
ligious lord himself said grace. This was the 
blessing that he asked: “ God damn and con- 


John Wesley 383 

found all Presbyterian parsons, their wives 
and children and families henceforth and for 
evermore. Amen.” 

Now this was the age that John Wesley in 
the providence of God was called to reform. 
Fortunately, he had a gifted brother, Charles, 
to sing the truth which he proclaimed, and if 
the former was the organizing genius, the lat¬ 
ter was the sweet psalmist of the Methodist 
Reformation. Charles once wrote to John 
what was most true: “¥e seem designed for 

each other.” Charles also preached, but it is 
his hymns which make him immortal. John 
also composed songs of Zion, but his distin¬ 
guishing excellence sprang from his sermonic 
and administrative ability. His mother’s ad¬ 
vice was therefore judicious: “ Make poetry 

sometimes your diversion, though never your 
business.” Rubens, the great painter, was at 
one time an ambassador in political life, but 
when a certain person said, “ Rubens is an am¬ 
bassador who amuses himself with painting,” 
the truthful retort of a friend was, “No, 
Rubens is a painter who amuses himself with 
embassies.” The artist did hold himself 
steadily to the supreme purpose of his life. 
So did John Wesley; though sometimes court¬ 
ing the sacred muse, it was to preaching and 
organizing that he gave himself preeminently. 


384 The Trend of the Centuries 

Wesley’s life is naturally divided into two 
periods, the ritualistic and the evangelistic. 
He did not immediately find his true place and 
mission in the eighteenth century, as we will 
see by a consideration of the first thirty-five 
years of his life, during which he did not suc¬ 
ceed in breaking away from the environment 
of his age, from the trammels of ecclesias- 
ticifm. 

His father was a scholarly and godly rector; 
his mother, Susanna, was a woman of remark¬ 
able endowments, intellectual and spiritual. 
Though she had nineteen children in all, she 
herself took their early mental training in 
hand. And she gave close attention to their 
religious needs. She taught them the Lord’s 
Prayer at five years of age; she instructed 
them in the catechism and in the Bible. She 
talked with each personally on the things per¬ 
taining to the soul, and while she yet had only 
eight children we find her recording this 
method of procedure: “ I take such a propor¬ 
tion of time as I can spare every night, to dis¬ 
course with each child by itself, on something 
that relates to its principal concerns. On 
Monday I talk with Molly; on Tuesday with 
Hetty; Wednesday with Haney; Thursday 
with Jacky; Friday with Patty; Saturday 
with Charles; and with Emily and Suky to- 


John Wesley 385 

gether on Sunday.” That Thursday night’s 
talk each week with Jacky doubtless helped 
materially in making John Wesley what he 
became. He was not a little indebted to so 
devoted and capable a woman, who actually 
trained her children to cry softly, who justi¬ 
fied herself in telling a child the twentieth 
time to do a thing on the ground that her 
labor would have been lost, if she had “ only 
told him nineteen times.” How she ever 
found time for all she did is a mystery, and 
that, too, when her rule was to take an hour 
both morning and evening for her private de¬ 
votions. Only by being very methodical could 
she have succeeded, and she therefore well de¬ 
serves the honor of being called the first 
Methodist. 

Her maternal heart was greatly drawn out 
to John by an event which nearly took him 
from her before he had reached his sixth 
birthday. One midnight the Epworth parson¬ 
age was discovered to be on fire. All man¬ 
aged to escape from the burning house except 
Jacky, who was heard to cry for help from 
the nursery. The father in agony saw the 
stairs all ablaze, and thought the child must 
perish in the flames. But the little fellow 
climbed out on the casement of the window. 
There was no time to run for a ladder, and 


386 The Trend of the Centuries 

therefore among those who had gathered to 
help in extinguishing the conflagration, one 
mounted the shoulder of another, and thus 
lifted him down from his perilous position. 
He had barely been rescued when the whole 
roof fell in with a crash. Then all kneeled in 
prayer and thanked God for the deliverance, 
and the father said, gratefully, “ He has given 
me all my eight children : let the house go; I 
am rich enough! ” He was richer than he 
knew in the preservation of such a life, and 
the mother resolved “ to be more particularly 
careful of the soul of the child,” so providen¬ 
tially spared to the household, and, we can 
say, to the whole religious world. 

That her nurture of him was not in vain is 
evidenced by the fact that he became a com¬ 
municant in the church at the age of eight, 
and it was not an empty profession. Soon 
after this he had the smallpox, but he bore it, 
said his mother, “ like a man, and indeed like 
a Christian, without any complaint.” She 
adds: “ He seemed angry at the smallpox 
when they were sore, as we guessed by his 
looking sourly at them, for he never said any¬ 
thing.” He thus showed genuine Christian 
resignation beyond what was to be expected 
in one of his tender years. 

After being put to school for a while in 


John Wesley 387 

London, he next entered Oxford, where he 
showed fine scholarship in the classics and 
other collegiate studies, and where he after¬ 
ward became a Fellow and Greek lecturer. 
While here he and some companions turned 
their attention more earnestly than hitherto 
to religion. They read the “Imitation of 
Christ ” by Thomas a Kempis, Law’s “ Serious 
Call,” and Taylor’s “ Holy Living and Dying.” 
John and Charles Wesley, and later the mag¬ 
netic Whitefield, were the leaders in what be¬ 
came known as the Godly Club. They prayed 
a great deal, they scrupulously attended all 
the services of the church, they partook of the 
communion every - Sunday. They almost re¬ 
garded a hearty laugh and a good dinner as 
inconsistent with religion. They engaged 
much in solemn conversation. They visited 
the sick and the inmates of prisons and poor- 
houses. They gave not only their services but 
money to the cause. John Wesley once 
walked the distance between Epworth and 
Oxford, that he might give what the ride 
would have cost to the poor. He let his hair 
grow long, flowing down his shoulders, to save 
the expense of the cutting, that he might have 
more to give away. The charities of his en¬ 
tire life are said to have amounted to over one 
hundred thousand dollars, and even to have 


388 The Trend of the Centuries 

approximated two hundred thousand. He and 
his “ holy ” brethren, as they were opprobri- 
ously called, made a most methodical use of 
their time and talents; they were so very me¬ 
thodical that they were nicknamed Methodists. 

But Wesley was not yet the real Methodist 
that he became. He was still a high church¬ 
man, an extreme ritualist with mystical and 
ascetic tendencies. In this spirit he went on 
the mission to Georgia, soon after that Ameri¬ 
can colony was formed and christened for King 
George II. During the voyage he was very 
abstemious in his diet, substituting vegetables 
for meat. He inured himself to various hard¬ 
ships. One night a high sea dampened his 
bed so that it could not be occupied with safety, 
and he lay down upon the floor, where he slept 
so soundly that he thought it would be almost 
wicked to desire or use anything better for a 
couch. After reaching the colony he went on 
a flat-bottomed boat to see his brother Charles 
at another colonial station, and, wrapped only 
in a cloak, he lay down to rest upon the deck. 
During the night in his sleep he rolled off into 
the ocean, where he was awakened by his sud¬ 
den bath, but his enthusiasm in the renuncia¬ 
tion of soft indulgences was not dampened in 
the least by the experience. He continued to 
discard the use of a bed. 


John Wesley 389 

While in Georgia he often slept upon the 
ground, sometimes when it was so cold that in 
the morning his hair would be frozen to the 
earth. Up to old age he frequently threw 
himself upon the grass for a short nap. When 
a soft bed was to be his place of repose, he had 
been known to throw himself across it, and to 
roll backward and forward till it was suf- 
ciently flattened and hardened to suit 
the stern tastes he had sedulously culti¬ 
vated. During his colonial experience he 
would swim streams, and then let his clothes 
dry on his person. His rigid and ascetic life 
and teaching made him unpopular with the 
colonists, although one act of his along this 
line must have brought him popularity, and 
that was when he went into his mission school 
barefoot, to reprove some pupils for making 
sport of others who came without shoes and 
stockings. But his exceeding religiousness, 
coupled with some very churchly notions about 
guarding the Lord’s Supper, resulted in the 
failure of his mission to America and in his re¬ 
turn to England in 1738, after an absence of 
a little over two years. 

He was now thirty-five years old, and he had 
not yet entered upon his distinctively evangel¬ 
istic work. Had he died at this age, he would 
have been unknown in history, and Methodism 


390 The Trend of the Centuries 

would not have had its splendid career. But 
here came a crisis in his life. On the voyage 
both to and from Georgia, Wesley had felt 
afraid in threatening storms, and he therefore 
doubted the genuineness of his religious ex¬ 
perience. He sought for certainty of faith and 
hope, and in a Moravian meeting in London, 
while he was listening to the reading of Luth¬ 
er’s preface to Paul’s Roman Epistle on justi¬ 
fication and a free salvation, he instantaneous^ 
came into a feeling so different from what he 
had had that he believed himself then and 
there for the first time to have been really 
converted. He may have been a Christian be¬ 
fore that, but he did not think that he had 
been. At any rate, he was marvelously changed 
from that memorable night. He loved to tell 
the precise time of his conversion, exactly fif¬ 
teen minutes before nine o’clock. 

He went forth preaching instantaneous con¬ 
version and full assurance and the witness of 
the Spirit, points still emphasized by the Metho¬ 
dists who do not talk of coming perhaps un- 
consciousty into the kingdom, after the man¬ 
ner of other Christians who believe more in 
the efficacy of religious nurture. Wesley could 
never have brought the calm but equally 
Christian Paley or others of like temperament 
into his experience of emotional and spiritual 


John Wesley 391 

upheaval, but he had a great work to do, as 
his followers yet have, upon persons of a cer¬ 
tain disposition who are so constituted that to 
be religious at all is to be kindled to fervor and 
enthusiasm, and to have a marked transition 
from one type of life to another. 

About this time Whitefield had been preach¬ 
ing outdoors to thousands of miners at Kings- 
wood, near Bristol, the throngs fairly darken¬ 
ing the fields and literally crowding the tree- 
tops to catch the silvery and melting eloquence 
of that marvelous voice of thunder and of mel¬ 
ody. Faces, black with the dust of the mines, 
were traced with white streaks by freely flow¬ 
ing tears, and a great work was beginning, 
when word was sent to Wesley for his assist¬ 
ance. He responded to the call, but at first 
was shocked at the field service, so entirely 
proper had it seemed to him for sinners to be 
converted only in the church. But he was per¬ 
suaded to speak to the multitudes in the open 
air, and with such happy and thrilling results 
that henceforth he pursued that method of 
preaching. Declaring that the world was his 
parish, he went forth to save people in the 
highways and hedges. He prayed extempo¬ 
raneously. He became a flame of fire. He 
called to immediate repentance. He proclaimed 
a full salvation. He insisted upon an entire 


392 The Trend of the Centuries 

consecration which he termed Christian per¬ 
fection, though by this he did not mean, he 
said, a state of absolute sinlessness. Holiness 
with him was freedom from voluntary but not 
from “ involuntary transgression.” He em¬ 
phasized what is very much needed everywhere, 
the making of a conscious surrender of the 
whole will. 

These burning truths were of course not 
acceptable to the stately and icy Establish¬ 
ment, whose / pulpits were gradually closed 
against the great Methodist revivalist. Even 
at Epworth, his old home, the curate forbade 
him the use of 'the church, whereupon he 
announced a sunset service in the churchyard, 
and there from his father’s tombstone he 
preached to such a congregation as never 
before had gathered in Epworth. His im¬ 
mense audience was so moved that some wept 
aloud, and others, after intense conviction of 
sin, shouted aloud with the joy of conversion. 
In 1876 a memorial tablet of John and Charles 
Wesley was placed in Westminster Abbey, with 
Dean Stanley to make the address. The heads 
of the two brothers are shown in profile, and 
John is also represented in that impressive 
scene of preaching from his father’s grave to 
the assembled multitudes that seemed to com¬ 
prise the entire population of Epworth. The 


John Wesley 393 

Epworth Leagues, the Christian Endeavor 
Societies of Methodism, constitute another 
memorial of Epworth’s greatest son. 

Wesley was both a doctrinal and practi¬ 
cal preacher. He advocated Arminianism 
too strongly and antagonized Calvinism too 
sharply, and his opponents made a similar mis¬ 
take on their side. A controversy was started 
which alienated Wesley and Whitefield, but 
this was only temporary, and, when the latter 
died in 1770, the former by request preached 
the funeral sermon of his friend who had 
been buried in Newburyport, Mass. And yet, 
though they became personally friendly, the 
breach they were prominent in making 
widened, till in that same year of 1770 
occurred the formal separation between the 
Wesleyan or Arminian and the Calvinistic 
Methodists. Toplady, too, the author of 
“ Rock of Ages,” had a heated discussion with 
Wesley, but we at present of the same differ¬ 
ing shades of belief throw over both parties 
the mantle of charity, while Arminian and 
Calvinist unite in singing both Toplady’s 
“ Rock of Ages ” and Charles Wesley’s “Jesus, 
Lover of My Soul.” 

Then, John Wesley was practical as well as 
doctrinal. When the miners of Bristol were 
converted, instead of having drunken midnight 


394 The Trend of the Centuries 

orgies, they were persuaded by Wesley to have 
religious meetings at that solemn hour, and 
while at first these midnight meetings were at 
frequent intervals, they eventually were con¬ 
fined to watching the old year out and the new 
year in, and that is the way the Methodist 
watch-meeting originated. The drinkers when 
converted changed the character of their mid¬ 
night gathering, that was all. Again, when the 
chapel at Bristol was built, the people were so 
poor that Wesley himself assumed the responsi¬ 
bility, and the property was vested in his name. 
This course was naturally pursued elsewhere, 
until he had the legal title to hundreds of chap¬ 
els. In paying for the one at Bristol, a member 
suggested that the society be divided into 
classes of twelve with a leader for each to 
collect a penny a week from every one, and 
the great organizer thought this plan might be 
adopted for spiritual ends. Thus originated 
the class system, with a leader to inquire after 
the religious welfare of each committed to his 
care. 

Lay preaching started as naturally. A lay¬ 
man was left in charge of the London society 
at the Old Foundry, and, the first thing he 
knew, in explaining the Bible he was found to 
be preaching. Wesley hurried back home to 
put a stop to the irregularity, but his wise 


John Wesley 395 

mother, who lived with him, said: “ He is as 

surely called of God to preach as you are.” 
He listened, and was convinced. Then he set 
laymen to preaching to other gathered congre¬ 
gations. He called them to a conference to 
discuss ways and means, and in a very practi¬ 
cal way. In pointing out prevailing sins, for 
instance, one conference manifesto uses this 
language: “Who does as he would he done 
by, in buying and selling ? particularly in sell¬ 
ing horses?” He and his helpers evidently 
understood human nature. 

The same directness appears in all of Wes¬ 
ley’s methods. He meant business, and showed 
masterly generalship. He insisted upon fixed 
hours for prayer, saying most truly,“ any time 
is no time.” He required unhesitating action 
of his assistants, and to a plea of inability he 
gave this summary answer: “ Gift or no gift, 
you are to do it; else you are not called to be 
a Methodist preacher.” He advised the stop¬ 
ping short of a listless congregation in their 
heartless singing with the pointed questions, 
“ How! Do you know what you said last ? 
Did you speak no more than you felt ? ” His 
annual conference was absolutely at his com¬ 
mand. He yearly called his helpers together, 
he expressly told them, to be advised by them 
but not to be governed. He was thoroughly 


396 The Trend of the Centuries 

autocratic, and the power that he was provi¬ 
dentially led to wield enabled him to say com- 
mandingly, Go here! and, Go there ! Exactly 
that he did, dividing the country into circuits, 
and manning them with his lay preachers, and 
thus establishing the itinerancy which has been 
one of the great features of Methodism. 

Step by step he was building up a compact 
organization which in time must inevitably go 
alone. He insisted that his movement was not 
schismatic, and two years before his death he 
wrote, “ I live and die a member of the Church 
of England.’ 1 He would have no meetings at 
canonical hours of worship. And yet he was 
steadily forced into positions which made a 
separate organization only a matter of time. 
Two events in 1784 hastened the separation. 
America had become independent of England 
by a successful and now historic revolution. 
There were thousands of followers of Wesley 
beyond the sea, and since he could not per¬ 
suade the ecclesiastical authorities to ordain a 
bishop for the western world, and since he 
probably saw the wisdom of an independent 
Church in the colonies which had become inde¬ 
pendent States, he resolved himself to ordain 
Doctor Coke as a superintendent or bishop for 
America. * 

He believed a presbyter (which he was) to 


John Wesley 397 

be synonymous in the New Testament with 
bishop, and, so far as apostolical succession was 
concerned, he pronounced it to be “ a fable 
which no man ever did or can prove.” He 
was more intent upon actual success than 
upon the figment of succession. He therefore, 
with co-presbyters, proceeded with the ordina¬ 
tion for America, greatly to the displeasure of 
his more churchly brother Charles, who ex¬ 
pressed his dissent in rhyme : 

11 So easily are bishops made, 

By man’s or woman’s whim; 

Wesley his hands on Coke hath laid, 

But who laid hands on him ? ” 

Notwithstanding this protest, that was the 
beginning of the great Methodist Episcopal 
Church of this country as a corporate body. 
The separation in England did not yet take 
place, but it was virtually consummated when 
in the same year of 1784 Wesley executed his 
Deed of Declaration, which conveyed at his 
death all his powers and properties to a con¬ 
ference of one hundred ministers, who two 
years after his decease took the next logical 
step and organized what had been only socie¬ 
ties into churches. Thus Wesleyanism, as an¬ 
other dissenting body of believers, entered 
upon its resplendent history in Great Britain. 


398 The Trend of the Centuries 

Marvelous has been the work of the founder 
of Methodism, and amid what difficulties he 
pursued his onward course! He unhappily 
married a widow who robbed him of his papers, 
and objected to his inviting his friends to 
his home ; who, in short, proved a veritable 
vixen, and finally left him for good. Yet 
he toiled on, carrying his domestic sorrow 
locked up in his own bosom. He was often 
followed by a howling mob which stoned him, 
struck him, tore his clothing to tatters, burst 
the door from its hinges in the house where 
he took refuge, and shouted in brutal tones, 
“ Knock his brains out! Down with him! 
Kill him at once! ” But he never faltered 
in his great work. 

He traveled, mostly on horseback, a quarter 
of a million of miles in all, and preached over 
forty thousand sermons. He did yet more. 
When he read this direction to his followers, 
“ to wear no needless ornaments, such as rings, 
earrings, necklaces, lace, ruffles,” we picture to 
ourselves the traditionally rude Methodist ex- 
horter without culture. He did have some 
crude ideas, like his belief in witchcraft, which 
he said could not be given up “ without giving 
up the Bible,” and yet he was a man of great 
learning and versatility. He was a graduate 
of Oxford. He and his brother Charles for 


John Wesley 399 

sixty years carried on their conversations in 
Latin. He prepared grammars of Hebrew 
and Greek and Latin and French. He wrote 
more than a dozen original volumes, and he 
abridged and edited enough more to make a 
library for his preachers of over two hundred 
books, if they cared to buy all his publications. 

But the time came when he was to rest 
from his labors. In his eighty-eighth year - he 
came to his end. He thought a sickness in 
1753 was to prove fatal, and wrote his own 
epitaph, but he was to live nearly forty years 
more, so unreliable, as physicians can testify, 
are premonitions which we ought to learn not 
to heed, for under their paralyzing power the 
sick person is not so readily restored as when 
hopefulness is maintained. Wesley’s premoni¬ 
tion, as is so often the case, proved false, but 
in due time the summons came, and he was 
ready. A lady once asked him, if he were to 
die at twelve o’clock the next night, how he 
would spend the intervening time. “ Why,” 
he replied, “ just as I intend to spend it now. 
I should preach this evening at Gloucester, 
and again at five to-morrow morning. After 
that, I should ride to Tewkesbury, preach in 
the afternoon, and meet the societies in the 
evening. I should then repair to friend Mar¬ 
tin’s house, who expects to entertain me, con- 


400 The Trend of the Centuries 

verse and pray with the family as usual, retire 
to my room at ten o’clock, commend myself 
to my heavenly Father, lie down to rest and 
wake up in glory.” 

That is about the way he did close his life; 
he was in the harness to the very last. He 
had no special disease, but there was simply a 
general breaking down from old age. As he 
grew weaker and weaker, he would repeat or 
sing a verse of a hymn written by his brother 
Charles who had preceded him over the river. 
He would exclaim, “ The best of all is, God is 
with us,” and when he had murmured, “ Fare¬ 
well,” he gently sank to rest. The lines of 
Dryden, which he had been heard to quote, 
applied most beautifully to himself: 

“ Of no distemper, of no blast he died, 

But fell like autumn fruit that mellowed long ; 

Even wondered at, because he dropped no sooner. 

Fate seemed to wind him up for fourscore years ; 

Yet feebly ran he on ten winters more : 

Till, like a clock worn out with eating time, 

The wheels of weary life at last stood still.” 


THE TRIUMPHANT NINETEENTH 
CENTURY 


Upon whom the ends of the ages are come.”—1 Cor. 

10 : 11 . 




x * 


XX 


THE TRIUMPHANT NINETEENTH CENTURY 

Professor Alfred Russell Wallace in 
his “ The Wonderful Century,” and others in 
kindred books, and, indeed, our very magazines 
and reviews, and our own memories as well, 
are bringing in array before us facts which 
make us realize that the accomplishments of 
the triumphant nineteenth century have been 
more brilliant than those of all its predeces¬ 
sors combined. More truly can it be said of 
us than of Paul’s contemporaries, “ upon whom 
the ends of the ages are come.” 

Other centuries have given us something, 
—the fourteenth the mariner’s compass, the 
fifteenth the art of printing, the sixteenth the 
Copernican theory of the cosmos, the seven¬ 
teenth the telescope and knowledge of the law 
of gravitation, the eighteenth the steam engine 
in its beginnings for practical use; but the 
nineteenth surpasses them all in what it has 
given to mankind. This will be evident from 
a rapid review of the immediate past. We 
must take a kaleidoscopic survey of the field, 
shifting the view very frequently, in order to 
403 


404 The Trend of the Centuries 

get any adequate conception of the marvelous 
changes which have only recently taken place. 

First, the governmental readjustments have 
been marked. Passing by other nations, our 
own country has sprung to the forefront 
even within the latter half of the century, not 
only striking the shackles from more than four 
million bondmen on our own soil, but striking 
another blow for human liberty in the swift 
overthrow of Spain. Our national develop¬ 
ment has been along not only political but 
also literary lines. Substantially all of Amer¬ 
ican literature has been produced within fifty 
years, until Sydney Smith’s contemptuous, 
“ Who reads an American book ? ” is proudly 
answered by rehearsing the names of poets 
and essayists and historians who do not suffer 
in comparison with those put forward by any 
other land. 

What have been well termed the dying na¬ 
tions have been losing their supremacy, and 
the governments that stand for the higher 
civilization have been becoming increasingly 
dominant, until they now divide the whole 
world into their respective spheres of influence. 
Particularly has the Anglo-Saxon race, includ¬ 
ing the English and Americans, become the 
great controlling factor in shaping the destiny 
of the globe. Not without deep meaning is 


Triumphant Nineteenth Century 405 

the fact that within the century not only has 
a third of the earth’s population come under 
the sway of those who speak the language of 
Shakespeare, but those who use this tongue 
itself have grown from twenty to one hun¬ 
dred and thirty millions. English in wideness 
of use has advanced from the fifth to the first 
place, and gives promise, Gladstone believed, 
of such prevalence a century hence, that those 
using it will probably outnumber those speak¬ 
ing all the other European languages. Surely, 
with such a hopeful trend of governmental 
affairs, for the last half-century especially, we 
can say, “ upon whom the ends of the ages are 
come.” 

Secondly, the social or industrial conditions 
of the present are an immense improvement 
upon the past. Let any disposed to be de¬ 
pressed by the situation as it is to-day read 
Macaulay’s famous third chapter on “ The Con¬ 
dition of England in 1685,” and it will be to 
him a tonic. He will learn that two centuries 
ago the laborer received ordinarily for wages 
four shillings a week and boarded himself. 
What would a workman at present think of a 
dollar a week ? Meat was an occasional lux¬ 
ury then, while now, in America at least, it is a 
common article of diet. In France the peo¬ 
ple, instead of living as did their ancestors, so 


406 The Trend of the Centuries 

late as a century ago, in caves and mud houses 
and windowless cabins, now have their neat 
homesteads often of seven and eight rooms, 
with a general air of thrift. In 1789 only 
one-fourth of the soil was owned by the French 
peasantry, whereas to-day more than one-half is. 

Never did so many have the comforts of 
life as in the happy nineteenth century, and 
Macaulay in drawing his contrasts between the 
present and two hundred years ago summed 
up what he had to say in these words: “ It is 
now the fashion to place the golden age of 
England in times when noblemen were desti¬ 
tute of comforts the want of which would be 
intolerable to a modern footman, when farm¬ 
ers and shopkeepers breakfasted on loaves the 
very sight of which would raise a riot in a 
modern workhouse, when men died faster in 
the purest country air than they now die in 
the most pestilential lanes of our towns.” 

Particularly in America, even in these re¬ 
cent times which are so bewailed, has there 
been social and industrial progress. The aver¬ 
age yearly wages of American workmen rose 
from $247 in 1850 to $429 in 1890. President 
McKinley’s Secretary of the Treasury, the 
Hon. Lyman J. Gage, on the authority of the 
commissioner of labor, said that from 1872 to 
1891 prices of what workmen have to buy fell 


Triumphant Nineteenth Century 407 

twenty-seven and a half per cent., while during 
the same twenty years their wages increased 
ten per cent., a decided economic gain for the 
laborer. During the same double decade the 
depositors in savings banks increased from less 
than two to more than five million persons. 
There is room for improvement yet, but let us 
be grateful for the progress made, and let us 
be correspondingly hopeful for the future. 
Let us only push courageously on for the 
workman’s Utopia, and through struggle, very 
likely, we nevertheless shall get there. 

There is a Scottish story that two clans each 
claimed a certain fair island. It was finally 
agreed between them that the side which won 
in a boat-race thereto, which could by one of 
its rowers first touch with his hand the coveted 
shore, should be the owner. The McDonalds 
and the Campbells both bent to their oars, and 
the latter steadily gained on the former, until 
it seemed certain that the Campbell clan would 
win, when a McDonald laid his left hand 
down upon his rowing bench, cut it off with 
one blow, and threw it to the island just ahead 
of the Campbells. This was like Douglas 
carrying the heart of Bruce in a casket of gold 
to the Holy Land, and when his retainers 
faltered in some contest of those feudal times, 
throwing the precious treasure forward, and 


408 The Trend of the Centuries 

thus challenging his followers to go where the 
heart of their beloved Bruce had first gone. 
If the present conflict between labor and capi¬ 
tal is strenuous, there is nothing discouraging 
about the strife, for with this continued, with 
hand and heart engaged in pushing ever for¬ 
ward, there are to come steadily improving 
social conditions in the future as in the past, 
until the Utopia of our dreams, the isle of the 
blest, becomes the possession of humanity. 

Note, thirdly, the strides that science has 
made. Geology, giving us a new conception 
of the eternity of Him who works from ever¬ 
lasting to everlasting, has been largely a prod¬ 
uct of the triumphant nineteenth century, and 
within its second half, particularly, we have 
learned much of the marvelous glacial age, 
during which our New England was buried 
beneath ice of Alpine thickness, Mount Wash¬ 
ington itself being completely submerged. 
Then “ Greenland’s icy mountains ” extended 
as far south as New York, Cincinnati and St. 
Louis, and as far west as the Mississippi val¬ 
ley. Moreover, because of flint weapons in 
glacial deposits, we have ascertained the antiq¬ 
uity of man, that he was coexistent with the 
mammoth and other now extinct animals 
twenty thousand or more years ago; and we 
do not feel obliged to accept the chronological 


Triumphant Nineteenth Century 409 

figures which Archbishop Usher inserted in 
our Bibles. 

In astronomy there have been great ad¬ 
vances. We talk boastfully about the dis¬ 
covery of America in 1492, but, to say nothing 
of lunar and astral revelations almost innu¬ 
merable in our day, a great planet, many times 
larger than our earth, gigantic Neptune, is a 
comparatively recent gift of astronomical re¬ 
search to our knowledge, 1846 marking the 
date of this discovery that was not continental 
but planetary. There are still later astro¬ 
nomical triumphs. The black lines crossing 
the solar spectrum, crossing the prismatic 
colors constituting white light, were not dis¬ 
covered till 1802, and, what is more important, 
their meaning was not known till about 1860, 
when after experiments it was learned that the 
dark transverse bands stood, according to 
their width, for different elements, such as 
copper and zinc and iron, while the existence 
of these substances in our sun has thus been 
proved. We can, in like manner, declare with 
certainty what materials enter into the com¬ 
position of stars infinitely removed from us in 
distance. When there are hydrogen lines, for 
instance, we know that the white sun thus 
certified to is much hotter than a red sun show¬ 
ing a different spectrum analysis. And by the 


410 The Trend of the Centuries 

same wonderful spectroscope we calculate how 
far away starry orbs are, and we determine 
the rapidity of their movements. 

What more shall we say of the scientific 
progress that has been made? “By the 
middle of the century,” says President Low of 
Columbia, “ Darwin had given what has been 
held to be substantial proof of the theory of 
development.” Evolution in our generation 
has worked a complete revolution in human 
thought, as did the Copernican theory of the 
universe which in the sixteenth century dis¬ 
placed the Ptolemaic that for ages had reigned 
supreme. The evolutionary in its grand out¬ 
lines, and not pushed to an extreme, is no 
longer doubted. We can no more speak of 
“ science, falsely so called,” for it is science, 
knowledge indeed, wondrous beyond all that 
with which previous ages have been favored. 
Learning more and more of the Creator and 
his laws, we can say with Kepler, “ O Al¬ 
mighty God, we are thinking thy thoughts 
after thee,” and with Paul, “Upon us the ends 
of the ages are come.” 

Fourthly, invention has been a most distin¬ 
guishing thing about what has been well 
designated as “the wonderful century.” 
Homer sang, as another has reminded us, of 
“The smooth-haired horses, and the rapid car.” 


Triumphant Nineteenth Century 411 

What did he have in mind ? The lumbering 
chariot of antiquity, which to all intents and 
purposes survived till this century as a means 
of conveyance. Swifter than the Greek poet’s 
“ rapid car ” drawn by fleet horses are our 
modern bicycles, and automobiles, and our elec¬ 
tric cars, of which we can say in the language 
of the prophet Nahum, “ The appearance of 
them is like torches, they run like the light¬ 
nings.” 

Not till 1846 did Elias Howe of Cambridge 
develop the sewing machine into a practical 
instrument which has since revolutionized the 
work of the seamstress and of all our shoe 
factories. The delicate and yet efficient 
mechanism of the typewriter is of our own 
day. Not before this century were there 
harvesters by steam power reaping the grain, 
and threshing and winnowing it, and deliver¬ 
ing it in sacks ready for the market. Candles 
and snuffers are recollections of my own boy¬ 
hood up in the Catskills, but these have been 
displaced by gas and electricity, which turn 
night into day. By the introduction of small 
incandescent lamps into the stomach for med¬ 
ical purposes the very interior of the human 
body is being illuminated. 

For the slow sailship of all the preceding 
centuries, the nineteenth century has seen sub- 


412 The Trend of the Centuries 

stituted the steamer, while the development 
here has been phenomenal. The first steam¬ 
ship to cross the Atlantic was the “ Savannah ” 
in 1819, but not till 1838 were regular trips 
begun with the “ Great Western ” leading off, 
and she required fourteen days for the voy¬ 
age, which now takes less than a week, while 
the tonnage of 1,340 in the “Great Western” 
has been increased ten to twelve times, until 
“ Great ” is no misnomer when applied to our 
ocean flyers like the “ Oceanic,” as it was in 
being attached to the original “ Western.” 

The first railroad was not opened till 1825, 
and that compared very poorly with the mag¬ 
nificent appointments of this later day, when 
we can travel in luxury at the rate of a mile a 
minute, and we may yet fly through the air. 
That is what we are doing in a sense, in that 
military experts ascend in a balloon and find 
out all about the locations of the enemy’s 
forces. Competent judges inform us that the 
principle of aerial navigation has been mas¬ 
tered, and there is only needed the perfecting 
of mechanism to insure the practical and suc¬ 
cessful flight of human beings through the 
buoyant atmosphere like birds, and the clas¬ 
sical fiction of Daedalus and Icarus will cease 
to be mythological. 

The telegraph did not come until 1837, and 


Triumphant Nineteenth Century 413 

the first line was not in actual operation till 
1839 in England, and till 1844 in America. 
The initial message flashed over the wire be¬ 
tween Washington and Baltimore was the 
Scriptural exclamation, “ What hath God 
wrought! ” The submarine cable did not come 
till 1851; a cable did not cross the Atlantic till 
1858; no really successful Atlantic line was laid 
till 1866, while now the same ocean is electric¬ 
ally crossed fourteen times, and other seas have 
likewise been invaded by the electric current. 
We can hear almost instantly of something that 
happened on the other side of this terrestrial 
ball, and because of the difference of time we 
hear of things, in a sense, before they occur. 
Then if telegraph communications are cut, be¬ 
sieged Ladysmith, closely invested on every 
side, yet sends by means of the sun and of mir¬ 
rors heliograph messages to the general advanc¬ 
ing for her relief, while now we are on the eve 
of wireless telegraphy. Truly, this is a great 
age in which we live. 

The telephone is a recent (1876) and almost 
miraculous accomplishment of inventive genius, 
and we were amazed when, in 1893, the long 
distance between Chicago and Boston was cov¬ 
ered, as a cornetist by the Atlantic played to 
an audience by the lake the inspiring strains of 
“ America,” while the Chicagoans, wishing to 


414 The Trend of the Centuries 

be cordial, but innocent of the eastern situa¬ 
tion, answered back, “ How is skating on the 
Back Bay ? ” The phonograph, of startling ca¬ 
pabilities, belongs to the last quarter of the* 
nineteenth century. By it the human voice can 
be recorded and preserved, so that not only 
could Nansen in polar regions listen to the 
singing of his wife, who was in her distant 
Norwegian home, but the eloquent strains of 
great orators and the matchless melodies of 
prima donnas, and even the familiar tones of 
the beloved dead can be made to greet our ears. 

Later still, within the last decade, came 
knowledge of the X-rays, which reveal the 
very bones of the human frame, and which 
enable the surgeon to locate with exactness 
the bullet, which can thus be removed with 
neatness and dispatch. Belonging to our day 
also is the discovery of anaesthetics, by which 
a patient can be kept in an unconscious and 
painless state for an hour or more, while the 
operator removes the eye or the stomach, and 
brushes them up and puts them back again, or 
while some vital organ is laid bare and manip¬ 
ulated. It may be a question whether we are 
indebted for this blessing to a Boston or a 
Hartford man. We may have to erect a monu¬ 
ment and inscribe upon it, as Oliver Wendell 
Holmes said, “To ether” The discovery, at 


Triumphant Nineteenth Century 415 

any rate, belongs to this century, and in practi¬ 
cal results to the last fifty years. 

The photographic art was unknown till 
1839, when Daguerre made his first sun 
pictures, to be called after him daguerreotypes. 
Not till 1850, however, did improvements 
sufficiently cheapen the invention to make 
photographs a possible and an actual posses¬ 
sion of the poorest. And how photography 
has been lately developing, until we have 
our “animated pictures,” wherein with the 
biograph we can see the very rush of railroad 
trains, and the movements and smiles of persons 
life-sized ! On sensitive plates, too, are caught 
impressions of worlds in stellar depths hitherto 
undiscovered and undiscoverable. Since 1891 
colors have been capable of being photo¬ 
graphed, and when the expensiveness of the 
process has been lessened, we shall have in our 
pictures the very roses on the cheeks, and the 
delicate flush on the forehead, and the tender 
light of the eye. 

To mention the crowning success of all 
along this line, there was at the Paris exposi¬ 
tion for 1900, if press reports are to be cred¬ 
ited, an invention called the telelectroscope, 
which enables one to see at a distance as dis¬ 
tinctly as he can hear through the telephone 
over a continent. That means hereafter in- 


416 The Trend of the Centuries 

finite delight to multitudes, who in addition to 
listening to beloved voices miles away will be 
able to look into familiar faces while the con¬ 
versation is going on, though the communicat¬ 
ing friends be as far apart as St. Louis and 
New York. 

Such, in inventive results, has been the cen¬ 
tury of wonders, and if we have any regret at 
having lived in such a time, it can only be be¬ 
cause spiritually we have not made the prog¬ 
ress which has been ours materially, and we 
should gird ourselves for a greater religious 
advance. 

Fifthly, there has been gratifying growth 
religiously during the nineteenth century. A 
short time prior to the American Revolution, 
Voltaire said, “Before the beginning of the 
nineteenth century Christianity will have dis¬ 
appeared from the earth.” In this identical 
century the gospel has made greater gains 
than ever before. As another has said: 
“ Whether by conversion, colonization, or con¬ 
quest, the world is rapidly becoming Chris¬ 
tian.” While in 1800 the contributions for the 
Christianizing of the nations were only a 
quarter of a million of dollars, now they are 
over nineteen millions annually, according to 
the figures given at the Ecumenical Missionary 
Conference of 1900. And has this money 


Triumphant Nineteenth Century 417 

been expended in vain ? One hundred years 
ago there were two hundred million professed 
disciples of the Lord, while at present there are 
more than five hundred millions. That is, the 
gain in this single century has been much 
greater than for the preceding eighteen cen¬ 
turies. 

While in the United States in 1800 there 
was only one evangelical church-member to 
fifteen inhabitants, in 1890 the proportion was 
one to five, and must be about one to four at 
the close of the century. While in 1795 the 
first President Dwight of Yale could report 
“ only four or five of the students ” at that in¬ 
stitution as church-members, and while it was 
no better in other colleges, now more than 
half of the great collegiate body in America is 
professedly Christian. When the intelligence 
of the country is being commanded, we need 
not fear for the other elements. Was there 
ever such a triumphant century even re¬ 
ligiously ? We can say with the poet: 

‘ ‘ The eternal step of Progress beats 
To that grand anthem, calm and slow, 

Which God repeats.” 

We recognize that “upon us the ends of the 
ages are come.” 

Finally, we can enter upon the twentieth 


418 The Trend of the Centuries 

century with a note of victory, and with the 
assurance of still greater achievements under 
God along religious no less than along other 
lines. We shall meet with obstacles, but these 
can be surmounted by a conquering faith. 
When Alexander set out on his conquest of the 
world, he encountered at the very beginning 
the vigorous opposition of some Thracian 
mountaineers. As his Macedonian followers 
proceeded to ascend Mount Hsemus, they 
found that their enemies at the summit had 
collected wagons which at the right moment 
were to be let loose upon the advancing sol¬ 
diers. Alexander, however, commanded his 
men to open ranks when the wagons came 
dashing down the slopes, and let the destruc¬ 
tive vehicles go flying down to the foot of the 
mountain without doing any injury. But if 
they should be in a narrow defile, where they 
could not part ranks, they were to march 
close togther, and when the dreaded wagons 
were seen to be coming, they were to lock 
shields over their heads, and let the wagons 
pass over these on a bridge thus formed; and 
this they did, like the immortal Dewey, with¬ 
out losing a man. They had confidence in 
their shields. 

The shields of faith in our advance as Chris¬ 
tians can be made to serve the same purpose, 


Triumphant Nineteenth Century 419 

and beneath them, locked together, we as sol¬ 
diers of the cross will be safe, and over them 
the war chariots of the enemy will go bound¬ 
ing harmlessly to the foot of every Hill of 
Difficulty which it may be our religious duty 
to ascend. We shall be invincible in every 
difficult pass, though there come thundering 
along all the engines of opposition that a malev¬ 
olent foe can let loose for our defeat and de¬ 
struction. Let us begin the ascent of the 
twentieth century for the conquest of the 
world to Christ with an assured confidence, 
with our shields of faith so closely joined as to 
make us like the Macedonian phalanx of old. 
Let us catch inspiration from the very times in 
which we live, for we are living at the cul¬ 
minating point of all the centuries, at “the 
ends of the ages,” when we can say with Ten¬ 
nyson in Locksley Hall, 

“Through the shadow of the globe we sweep into the 
younger day: 

Better fifty years of Europe than a cycle of Cathay.” 




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